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THE 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 



BY 

CHARLES LAMB, 



FJB82 SERIES. 



New York: 

THE P. M. LUPTON PUBLISHING COMPANY, 

Nos. 73-76 Walker Street. 



p 




■^ 

'^ 



PR 4?6 I 



4 « 65 5 5 

AUG 1 2 1942 



CONTENTS. 



The South-Sea House 

Oxford in the Vacation . 

Christ's Hospital Five-and-Thirty Years AOfO 

The Two Races of Men . . 

Xevv-Year's-Eve 

Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist 

A Chapter on Ears . 

All-Fools'-Day . . . 

A Quakers' Meeting . 

The Old and the New Schoolmaster 

Valentine's-Day . . . 

Imperfect Sympathies 

Witches, and other Night-Fears 

My Rflations 

Mackery End, in Hertfordshire 

Modern <orALLANTRY 

The Old Benchers op the Inner Templi 

Grace f'ifore Meat 

My First Play 

Dream-Children: a Reyerib • 



VAG% 

6 
. 15 

22 
. 39 

46 
. 54 

63 

, 69 

74 

. 80 

91 

, 95 

105 
. 113 

121 
. 127 

133 
. 147 

155 
. 161 



4 CONTENTS. 

PAG* 

Distant Correspondents .... 166 

The Praise op Chimnet-S weepers , . . 173 

A Complaint of the Decay of Beggars in the Metrop- 
olis ...... 18S 

A Dissertation upon Roast-Pig . . . . 198 

A Bachelor's Complaint of the Behavior of Married 

People ...... 203 

On some op the Old Actors . . . .211 

On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century , 226 
Ois THE Acting of Mund'sk . « • - 236 



THE ESSAYS OF ELIA, 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 

Keader, in thy passage from the Bank — where thou 
hast been receiving thy half-yearly dividends (supposing 
thou art a lean annuitant like myself) — to the Flower 
Pot, to secure a place for Dalston, or Shacklewell, or 
some other suburban retreat northerly, didst thou never 
observe a melancholy -looking, handsome, bricfc-and-stone 
edifice, to the left — where Threadneedle Street abuts 
upon Bishopsgate? I dare say thou hast often ad- 
mired its magnificent portals ever gaping wide and dis- 
closing to view a grave court, with cloisters, and pillars, 
with few or no traces of goers-in or comers-out — a deso- 
lation something like Balclutha's.' 

This was once a house of trade — a centre of busy in- 
terests. The throng of merchants was here — the quick 
pulse of gain — and here some forms of business are still 
kept up, though the soul be long since fled. Here are 
etill to be seen stately porticoes ; imposing staircases, 
offices roomy as the state apartments in palaces — desert- 
ed, or thinly peopled with a few straggling clerks ; the 
still more sacred interiors of court and committee-rooms, 

» I passed by the walls of Balclutha, and they were desolate' 

-—OSSIAN. 



6 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

with venerable faces of beadles, door-keepers — direc- 
tors seated in form on solemn days (to proclaim a dead 
dividend), at long, worm-eaten tables, that have been 
mahogany, with tarnished gilt-leather coverings, sup- 
porting massy silver inkstands long since dry ; the oaken 
wainscots hung with pictures of deceased governors and 
sub-governors, of Queen Anne, and the two first mon- 
archs of the Brunswick dynasty; huge charts, which 
subsequent discoveries have antiquated ; dusty maps of 
Mexico, dim as dreams, and soundings of the Bay of 
Panama ! The long passages hung with buckets, append- 
ed, in idle row, to walls, whose substance might defy 
any, short of the last, conflagration : with vast ranges of 
cellarage under all, where dollars and pieces-of-eight 
once lay, an "unsunned heap," for Mammon to have 
solaced his solitary heart withal, long since dissipated, 
or scattered into air at the blast of the breaking of that 
famous Bubble. — 

Such is the South- Sea House. At least, such it was 
forty years ago, when I knew it, a magnificent relic ! 
What alterations may have been made in it since, I have 
had no opportunities of verifying. Time, I take for grant- 
ed, has not freshened it. No wind has resuscitated the 
face of the sleeping waters. A thicker crust by this 
time stagnates upon it. The moths, that were then bat- 
tening upon its obsolete ledgers and day-books, have 
rested from their depredations, but other light genera- 
tions have succeeded, making fine fretwork among their 
single and double entries. Layers of dust have accumu- 
lated (a superfetation of dirt!) upon the old layers, that 
seldom used to be disturbed, save by some curious finger, 
now and then, inquisitive to explore the mode of book- 
keeping in Queen Anne's reign ; or, with less hallowed 



THE SOUTEI-SEA HOUSE. 7 

curiosity, seeking to unveil some of the mysteries of that 
tremendous hoax, whose extent the petty peculators of 
our day look back upon with the same expression of 
incredulous admiration, and hopeless ambition of rivalry, 
as would become the puny face of mpdern conspiracy 
contemplating the Titan size of Vaux's superhuman plot. 

Peace to the manes of the Bubble ! Silence and des- 
titution are upon thy walls, proud house, for a memO' 
rial! 

Situated as thou art, in the very heart of stirring and 
living commerce, amid the fret and fever of speculation 
— with the Bank, and the 'Change, and the India-house 
about thee, in the heyday of present prosperity, with 
their important faces, as it were, insulting thee, thQir poor 
neigTibor out of business — to the idle and merely contem- 
plative, to such as me, old house ! there is a charm in 
thy quiet : a cessation — a coolness from business — an in- 
dolence almost cloistral — which is delightful ! With 
what reverence have I paced thy great bare rooms and 
courts at eventide ! They spoke of the past : the shade 
of some dead accountant, with visionary pen in ear, 
Would flit by me, stiff as in life. Living accounts and ac- 
countants puzzle me. I have no skill in figuring. But thy 
great dead tomes, which scarce three degenerate clerks of 
the present day could lift from their enshrining shelves — 
with their old fantastic flourishes and decorative rubric 
interlacings, their sums in triple columniations, set 
down with formal superfluity of ciphers, with pious 
sentences at the beginning, without which our religious 
ancestors never ventured to open a book of business or 
bill of lading ; the costly vellum covers of some of them 
almost persuading us that we are got into some Jyetter 
library — are very agreeable and edifying spectacles. I 



8 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA- 

can look upon ttiese defunct dragons witli complacency, 
Thj heavy, odd-sliaped, ivory-handled penknives (our 
ancestors had everything on a larger scale than we have 
hearts for) are as good as anything fi-om Herculaneum. 
The pounce-hoxes of our days have gone retrograde. 

The very clerks which I rememher in the South-Sea 
House — I speak of forty years back — had an air very 
different from those in the public offices that I have had 
to do with since. They partook of the genius of the 
place ! 

They were mostly (for the establishment did not ad- 
mit of superfluous salaries) bachelors. Generally (for 
they had not much to do) persons of a curious and spec- 
ulative turn of mind. Old-fashioned, for a reason men- 
tioned before. Humorists, for they were of all descrip- 
tions ; and, not having been brought together in early 
life (which has a tendency to assimilate the members of 
corporate bodies to each other), but, for the most part, 
placed in this house in ripe or middle age, they neces- 
sarily carried into it their separate habits and oddities, 
unqualified, if I may so speak, as into a common stock. 
Hence they formed a sort of Noah's ark. Odd fishes. 
A lay monastery. Domestic retainers in a great house, 
kept more for show than use. Yet pleasant fellows, full 
of chat — and not a few among them had arrived at con- 
siderable proficiency on the German flute. 

The cashier at that time was one Evans, a Cambro- 
Briton. He had something of the choleric complexion 
of his countrymen stamped on his visage, but was a 
worthy, sensible man at bottom. He wore his hair, to 
the last, powdered and frizzed out, in the fashion which 
I remember to have seen in caricatures of what were 
termed, in my young days, Macaronis. He was the last 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 9 

of that race of beaux. Melancholy as a gibcat over 
his counter all the forenoon, I think I see him, making 
up his cash (as they call it) with tremulous fingers, as if 
he feared every one about him was a defaulter ; in his 
hypochondry ready to imagine himself one ; haunted, at 
least, with the idea of the possibility of his becoming 
one ; his tristful visage clearing up a little over his roast 
neck of veal at Anderton's at two (where his picture 
still hangs, taken a little before his death by desire of the 
master of the coffee-house, which he had frequented for 
the last five-and-twenty years), but not attaining the 
meridian of its animation till evening brought on the 
hour of tea and visiting. The simultaneous sound of his 
well-known rap at the door with the stroke of the clock 
announcing six, was a topic of never-failing mirth in the 
families which this dear old bachelor gladdened with his 
presence. Then was his folate, his glorified hour! How 
would he chirp, and expand, over a mufiin ! How would 
he dilate into secret history ! His countryman, Pennant 
himself, in particular, could not be more eloquent than 
he in relation to old and new London — the site of old 
theatres, churches, streets gone to decay — where Eosa- 
mond's Pond stood — the Mulberry Gardens — and the 
Conduit in Cheap — with many a pleasant anecdote, de- 
rived from paternal tradition, of those grotesque figures 
which Hogarth has immortalized in his picture of JSfoon — 
tlie worthy descendants of those heroic confessors, who, 
flying to this country, from the wrath of Louis XIV. and 
his dragoons, kept alive the flame of pure religion in the 
sheltering obscurities of Hog Lane, and the vicinity of 
the Seven Dials ! 

Deputy, under Evans, was Thomas Tame. He had 
the air and stoop of a nobleman. You would have 



10 THE ESSAYS OE ELIA. 

taken him for one, had you met him in one of the pas- 
sages leading to Westminster Hall. By stoop, I mean that 
gentle bending of the body forward, which, in great 
men, must be supposed to be the effect of an habitual 
condescending attention to the applications of their in- 
feriors. While he held you in converse, you felt strained 
to the height in the colloquy. The conference over, you 
were at leisure to smile at the comparative insignificance 
of the pretensions which had just awed you. His intel- 
lect was of the shallowest order. It did not reach to a 
saw or a proverb. His mind was in its original state of 
white paper. A sucking babe might have posed him. 
What was it, the 0? Was he rich? Alas! no. Thomas 
Tame was very poor. Both he and his wife looked out- 
wardly gentlefolksy when I fear all was not well at all 
times within. She had a neat, meagre person, which it 
was evident she- had not sinned in over-pampering; but 
in its veins wa^ noble blood. She traced her descent, by 
some labyrinth of relationship, which I never thoroughly 
understood — much less can explain with any heraldic 
certainty at this time of day — to the illustrious but un- 
fortunate house of Derwentwater. This was the secret 
of Thomas's stoop. This was the thought — the senti- 
ment — the bright, solitary star of your lives — ye mild and 
happy pair-— which cheered you in the night of intellect, 
and in the obscurity of your station ! This was to you 
instead of riches, instead of rank, instead of glittering 
attainments : and it was worth them all together. You 
insulted none with it ; but, while you wore it as a piece 
of defensive armor only, no insult likewise could reach 
you through it. Deeus et solamen. 

Of quite another stamp was the then accountant, John 
Tipp. He neither pretended to high blood, nor, in good 



THE SOUTH-SE/A HOUSE. H 

truth, cared one fig about the matter. He "thought an 
accountant the greatest character in the world, and him- 
self the greatest accountant in it." Yet John was not 
without his hobby. The fiddle relieved his vacant hours. 
He sang, certainly, with other notes than to the Orphean 
lyre. He did, indeed, scream and scrape most abomi- 
nably. His fine suite of ofiicial rooms in Threadneedle 
Street, which, without anything very substantial ap- 
pended to them, were enough to enlarge a man's notions 
of himself that lived in them (I know not who is the 
occupier of them now), resounded fortnightly to the 
notes of a concert of " sweet breasts," as our ancestors 
would have called them, culled from club-rooms and or- 
chestras — chorus-singers — first and second violoncellos — 
double basses — and clarionets — who ate his cold mutton, 
and drank his punch, and praised his ear. He sate like 
Lord Midas among them. But at the desk Tipp was 
quite another sort of creature. Thence all ideas, that 
were purely ornamental, were banished. You could not 
speak of anything romantic without rebuke. Politics 
were excluded. A newspaper was thought too refined 
and abstracted. The whole duty of man consisted in 
writing off dividend warrants. The striking of the an- 
Tiual balance in the company's books (which, perhaps, 
differed from the balance of last year in the sum of £25 
Is. 6d.) occupied his days and nights for a month previ- 
ous. Not that Tipp was blind to the deadness of things 
(as they call them in the city) in his beloved house, or 
did not sigh for a return of the old stirring days when 
South-Sea hopes were young — (he "was indeed equal to 
the wielding of any the most intricate accounts of the 
most flourishing company in these or those days) — but 
to a genuine accountant the difference of proceeds is as 



12 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA, 

notfiing. The fractional fartiiing is as dear to his heart 
as the thousands which stand before it. He is the true 
actor, who, whether his part be a prince or a peasant, 
must act it with like intensity. With Tipp form was 
everything. His life was formal. His actions seemed 
ruled with a ruler. His pen was not less erring than his 
heart. He made the best executor in the world ; lie was 
plagued with incessant executorships accordingly, which 
excited his spleen and soothed his vanity in equal ratios. 
He would swear (for Tipp swore) at the little orphans^ 
whose rights he would guard with a tenacity like the 
grasp of the dying hand, that commended their interests 
to his protection. With all this there was about him a 
sort of timidity — (his few enemies used to give it a worse 
name) — a something which, in reference to the dead, we 
will place, if you please, a little on this side of the he- 
roic. Nature certainly had been pleased to endow John 
Tipp with a sufficient measure of the principle of self- 
preservation. There is a cowardice which we do not 
despise, because it has nothing base or treacherous in ita 
elements; it betrays itself, not you: it is mere tempera- 
ment; the absence of the romantic and the enterprising; 
it sees a lion in the way, and will not, with Fortinbras, 
"greatly find quarrel in a straw," when some supposed 
honor is at stake. Tipp never mounted the box of a 
stage-coach in his life ; or leaned against the rails of a 
balcony ; or walked upon the ridge of a parapet ; or 
looked down a precipice ; or let off a gun ; or went upon 
a water-party ; or would willingly let you go, if he could 
have helped it ; neither was it recorded of him that, for 
lucre, or for intimidation, he ever forsook friend or 
principle. 

Whom next shall we summon from the dusty dead, in 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 13 

whom common qualities become uncommon ? Can I for- 
get thee, Henry Man, the wit, the polished man of let- 
ters, the author^ of the South-Sea House? who never 
enteredst thy oflSce in a morning, or quittedst it in 
mid-day — (what didst thou in an office ?) — without some 
quirk that left a sting ! Thy gibes and thy jokes are now 
extinct, or survive but in two forgotten volumes, which 
I had the good fortune to rescue from a stall in Barbican, 
not three days ago, and found thee terse, fresh, epigram- 
matic, as alive. Thy wit is a little gone by in these fas- 
tidious days — thy topics are staled by the "new-born 
gauds " of the time ; but great thou usedst to be in Public 
Ledgers, and in Chronicles, upon Chatham, and Shel- 
burne, and Eockingham, and Howe, and Burgoyne, and 
Clinton, and the war which ended in the tearing from 
Great Britain her rebellious colonies — and Keppel, and 
"Wilkes, and Sawbridge, and Bull, and Dunning, and 
Pratt, and Richmond — and such small politics. — 

A little less facetious, and a great deal more obstrep- 
erous, was fine, rattling, rattle-headed Plumer. He was 
descended — not in a right line, reader (for his lineal pre- 
tensions, like his personal, favored a little of the sinister 
bend) — from the Plumers of Hertfordshire. So tradition 
gave him out; and certain family features not a little 
sanctioned the opinion. Certainly old Walter Plumer 
(his reputed author) had been a rake in his days, and 
visited much in Italy, and had seen the world. He was 
uncle, bachelor-uncle, to the fine old Whig still living, 
who has represented the county in so many successive 
Parliaments, and has a fine old mansion near Ware. 
Walter flourished in George the Second's days, and was 
the same who was summoned before the House of Com- 
mons about a business of franks, with the old Duchess 



14 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

of Marlborough. You may read of it in Johnson's " Life 
of Cave." Cave came off cleverly in that business. It 
is certain our Plumer did nothing to discountenance the 
rumor. He rather seemed pleased whenever it was, with 
all gentleness insinuated. But, besides his family preten ^ 
sions, Plumer was an engaging fellow, and sang glori- 
ously. — 

Not so sweetly sang Plumer as thou sangest, mild, 
childlike, pastoral M ; a flute's breathing less divine- 
ly whispering than thy Arcadian melodies, when, in 
tones worthy of Arden, thou didst chant that song sung 
by Amiens to the banished duke, which proclaims the 
winter wind more lenient than for a man to be ungrate- 
ful. Thy sire was old surly M , the unapproachable 

churchwarden of Bishopsgate. He knew not what he 
did, when he begat thee, like spring, gentle offspring of 
blustering winter : only unfortunate in thy ending, which 
should have been mild, couciliatory, swan-like. — 

Much remains to sing. Many fantastic shapes rise 
up, but they must be mine in private — already I have 
fooled the reader to the top ol' hie. bent — else could I 
omit that strange creature Woollett, who existed in trying 
the question, and loiigM litigations? — and still stranger, 
inimitable, solemn Hepworth, from whose gravity New- 
ton might have deduced the law of gravitation. How 
profoundly would he nib a pen — with what deliberation 
would he wet a wafer! — 

But it is time to close — night's wheels are rattling 
fast over me — it is proper to have done with this solemn 
mockery. 

Reader, what if I have been playing with thee all this 
i^'-hile ? — perad venture the very names which I have sum- 



OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 15 

moned up before thee are fantastic — iinsnbstantial — like 
Henry Pimpernel, and old John Naps of Greece. — 

Be satisfied that something answering to them has 
had a being. Their importance is from the past. 



OXFOED IN THE VACATION. 

Casting a preparatory glance at the bottom of this 
article — as the wary connoisseur in prints, with cursory 
eye (which, while it reads, seems as though it read not), 
never fails to consult the quis sculpsit in the corner, be- 
fore he pronounces some rare piece to be a Vivares, or a 
Woollet — methinks I hear you exclaim, reader, Who is 
Eliaf 

Because in my last I tried to divert thee with some 
half-forgotten humors of some old clerks defunct, in an 
old house of business, long since gone to decay, doubt- 
less, you have already set me down in your mind as one 
of the self-same college — a votary of the desk — a notched 
and cropped scrivener — one that sucks his sustenance, as 
certain sick people are said to do, through a quill. 

"Well, I do agnize something of the sort. I confess 
that it is my humor, my fancy — in the fore-part of the 
day, when the mind of your man of letters requires some 
relaxation — (and none better than such as at first sight 
seems most abhorrent from his beloved studies) — to while 
away some good hours of my time in the contemplation 
of indigos, cottons, raw silks, piece-goods, flowered or 
otherwise. In the first place .... and then it sends 
you home with such increased appetite to ypur books 
.... not to say, that your outside sheets, and waste 



16 THE ESSAYS OF E7IA. 

wrappers of foolscap, do receive into them, most kindly 
and naturally, tlie impression of sonnets, epigrams, es- 
says — so that the very parings of a counting-house are, 
in some sort, the settings-up of an author. The enfran- 
chised quill, that has plodded all the morning among 
the cart-rucks of figures and ciphers, frisks and curvets 
so at its ease over the flowery carpet-ground of a mid- 
night dissertation. It feels its promotion. ... So that 
you see, upon the whole, the literary dignity of Ulia 
is very little, if at all, compromised in the condescen- 
sion. 

Not that, in my anxious detail of the many commodi- 
ties incidental to the life of a public office, I would be 
thought blind to certain flaws, which a cunning carper 
might be able to pick in this Joseph's vest. And here I 
must have leave, in the fullness of my soul, to regret the 
abolition, and doing-away-with altogether, of those con- 
solatory interstices, and sprinklings of freedom, through 
^)he four seasons — the red-letter days, now become, to ail 
intents and purposes, dead-letter days. There was Paul, 
^nd Stephen, and Barnabas — 

" Andrew and John, men famous in old times " 

— we were used to keep all their days holy, as long back 
as I was at school at Christ's. I remember their eflBgies, 
by the same token, in the old Basket Prayer-Book. There 
hung Peter in his uneasy posture — holy Bartlemy in the 
troublesome act of flaying, after the famous Marsyas by 
Spagnoletti. I honored them all, and could almost have 
wept the defalcation of Iscariot — so much did we love to 
keep holy memories sacred — only methought I a little 
grudged at the coalition of the letter Jude with Simon — 
olmbbing (as it were) their sanctities together, to make 



OXFORD IN THE TAOATION. 17 

ap one poor gaudy-day between them — as an economy 
unworthy of the dispensation. 

These were bright visitations in a scholar's and a 
clerk's life — "far off their coming shone.'" I was as 
good as an almanac in those days. I could have told you 
such a saint's-day falls out next week, or the week after, 
Peradventure the Epiphany, by some periodical infelicity, 
would, once in six years, merge in a Sabbath. Now am 
I little better than one of the profane. Let me not be 
thought to arraign the wisdom of my civil superiors, who 
have judged the further observation of these holy tides 
to be papistical, superstitious. Only in a custom of such 
long standing, methinks, if their Holinesses the Bishops 
had, in decency, been first sounded — but I am wading 
out of my depths. I am not the man to decide the limits 
of civil and ecclesiastical authority — I am plain Elia — no 
Selden, nor Archbishop Usher — though at present in the 
thick of their books, here in the heart of learning, under 
the shadow of the mighty Bodley. 

I can here play the gentleman, enact the student. To 
such a one as myself, who has been defrauded in his 
young years of the sweet food of academic institution, 
nowhere is so pleasant, to while away a few idle weeks 
at, as one or other of the Universities. Their vacation, 
too, at this time of the year, falls in so pat with ours. 
Here I can take my walks unmolested, and fancy myself 
of what degree or standing I please. I seem admitted ad 
eundem. I fetch up past opportunities. I can rise at the 
ehapel-bell, and dream that it rings for me. In moods of 
humility I can be a Sizar, or a Servitor. When the pea- 
cock vein rises, I strut a Gentleman Commoner. In 
graver moments, I proceed Master of Arts. Indeed, I do 
not think I am much unlike that respectable character, 



IS THE ESSAYS OF ELTA. 

I have seen your dim-eyed vergers, and bed-mak«rs ia 
spectacles, drop a bow or a courtesy, as 1 pass, wisely mis- 
taking me for something of the sort. I go about in black, 
which favors the notion. Only in Christ Church rev- 
erend quadrangle, I can be content to pass for nothing 
short of a Seraphic Doctor. 

The walks at these times are so much one's own — the 
tall trees of Christ's, the groves of Magdalen ! The halls 
deserted, and, with open doors, inviting one to slip in 
unperceived, and pay a devoir to som.e Founder, or no- 
ble, or royal Benefactress (that should have been ours), 
whose portrait seems to smile upon their overlooked 
beadsman, and to adopt me for their own. Then, to 
take a peep in by the way at the butteries, and sculleries, 
redolent of antique hospitality : the immense caves of 
kitchens, kitchen fireplaces, cordial recesses ; ovens 
whose first pies were baked four centuries ago ; and 
spits which have cooked for Chaucer! IsTot the mean- 
est minister among the dishes but is hallowed to me 
through his imagination, and the Cook goes forth a Man- 
ciple. 

Antiquity! thou wondrous charm, what art thou? 
that, being nothing, art everything! When thou wert, 
thou wert not antiquity — then thou wert nothing, but 
hadst a remoter antiquity, as thou calledst it, to look 
back to with blind veneration; thou thyself being to 
thyself flat, jejune, modem/ What mystery lurks in 
this retroversion? or what half Januses^ are we, that 
cannot look forward with the same idolatry with which 
we forever revert! The mighty future is as nothing, 
b«ing everything! the past is everything, being nothing] 

* Januses of one face. — Sie Thomas Bkowne. 



OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 19 

What were thj darh ages? Surely the sun rose aa 
brightly then as now, and man got him to his work in 
the morning. Why is it we can never hear mention of 
them without an accompanying feeling, as though a pal- 
pable obscure had dimmed the face of things, and that 
our ancestors wandered to and fro groping ! 

Above all thy rarities, old Oxenford, what do moat 
arride and solace me, are thy repositories of mouldering 
learning, thy shelves — 

What a place to be in is an old library I It seems as 
though all the souls of all the writers, that have be- 
queathed their labors to these Bodleians, were reposing 
here, as in some dormitory, or middle state. I do not 
want to handle, to profane the leaves, their winding- 
sheets. I could as soon dislodge a shade. I seem to 
inhale learning, walking amid their foliage; and the 
odor of their old moth-scented coverings is fragrant as 
the first bloom of those sciential apples which gi'ew 
amid the happy orchard. 

Still less have I curiosity to disturb the elder re- 
pose of MSS. Those varies lectiones, so tempting to the 
more erudite palates, do but disturb and unsettle my 
faith. I am no Herculanean raker. The credit of the 
three witnesses might have slept unimpeached for me. 
I leave these curiosities to Porson, and to G. D. — whom, 
by-the-way, I found busy as a moth over some rotten 
archive, rummaged out of some seldom-explored press, 
in a nook at Oriel. With long poring, he is grown 
almost into a book. He stood as passive as one by the 
side of the old shelves. I longed to new-coat him in 
russia, and assign him his place. He might have mus- 
tered for a tall Scapula. 

D. is assiduous in his visits to these seats of learning. 



20 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

No inconsiderate portion of his moderate fortune, I ap- 
prehend, is consumed in journeys between them and 
Clifford's Inn — where, like a dove on the asp's nest, he 
has long taken up his unconscious abode, amid an incon- 
gruous assembly of attorneys, attorneys' clerks, appari- 
tors, promoters, vermin of the law, among whom he sits 
*'in calm and sinless peace." The fangs of the law 
pierce him not; the winds of litigation blow over his 
humble chambers ; the hard sheriff's officer moves his 
hat as he passes ; legal nor illegal discourtesy touches 
him ; none thinks of offering violence or injustice to him 
— ^you would as soon " strike an abstract idea." 

D. has been engaged, he tells me, through a course of 
laborious years, in an investigation into all curious mat- 
ter connected with the two Universities ; and has lately 

lit upon a MS. collection of charters, relative to C , 

by which he hopes to settle some disputed points — par- 
ticularly that long controversy between them as to 
priority of foundation. The ardor with which he en- 
gages in these liberal pursuits, I am afraid, has not met 
with all the encouragement it deserved, either here or 

at C . Your caputs and heads of colleges care less 

than anybody else about these questions. Contented to 
suck the milky fountains of their Alma Maters, without 
inquiring into the venerable gentlewomen's years, they 
rather hold such curiosities to be impertinent — unrever- 
end. They have their good glebe-lands in manu, and 
care not much to rake into the title-deeds. I gather at 
least so much from other sources, for D. is not a man to 
complain. 

D. started like un unbroke heifer when I interrupted 
him. A priori it was not very probable that we should 
liAve met in Oriel. But D. would have done the same 



OXFORD IN THE VACATION. %l 

had I accosted him on the sudden in his own walks in 
Clifford's Inn, or in the Temple. In addition to a pro- 
voking short-sightedness (the effect of late studies and 
watchings at the midnight oil), D. is the most absent of 
men. He made a call the other morning at our friend 
M.'s in Bedford Square ; and, finding nobody at home, 
was ushered into the hall, where, asking for pen and ink, 
wim great exactitude of purpose he enters me his name 
in the book — which ordinarily lies about in such places, 
to record the failures of the untimely or unfortunate 
Visitor — and takes his leave with many ceremonies and 
professions of regret. Some two or three hours after, 
his walking destinies returned him into the same neigh- 
6orhood again, and again the quiet image of the fireside 
circle at M.'s — Mrs. M, presiding at it like a Queen Lar, 
with pretty A. S. at her side — striking irresistibly on 
his fancy, he makes another call (forgetting that they 
were " certainly not to return from the country before 
that day week "), and, disappointed a second time, in- 
quires for pen and paper as before ; again the book is 
brought, and in the line just above that in which he is 
about to print his second name (his rescript) — his first 
name (scarce dry) looks out upon him like another Sosia, 
or as if a man should suddenly encounter his own dupli- 
cate ! The effect may be conceived. D. made many a 
good resolution against any such lapses in the future. I 
hope he will not keep them too rigorously. 

For with G. D., to be absent from the body is some- 
times (not to speak it profanely) to be present with the 
Lord. At the very time when, personally encountering 
thee, he passes on with no recognition — or, being 
stopped, starts like a thing surprised — at that moment, 
reader, he is on Mount Tabor ; or, Parnassus ; or, co- 



r^3 THE ESSAYS OF ELTA. 

sphered witli Plato ; or, with Harrington, framing " im- 
mortal Commonwealths," devising some plan of ameli- 
oration to thj country or thy species — peradvcnture 
meditating some individual kindness or courtesy, to be 
done to thee thyself^ the returning consciousness of 
which made him to start so guiltily at thy obtruded per- 
gonal presence. 

D. is delightful anywhere, but he is at the best in 
cjudti places as these. He cares not much for Bath. He 
is out of h^s e!.3ment at Buxton, at Scarborough, or Har- 
rowgate. The Cam and the Isis are to him "better than 
all the wate/s of Damascus." On the Muses' hill he is 
happy, and good, as one of the Shepherds on the Delec- 
table Mountuns ; and when he goes about with you to 
show you the halls and colleges, you think you have 
with you the Interpreter of the House Beautiful. 



OHEIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE-AND-THIRTY 
YEARS AGO. 

Its Mr. LamVi's "Works," published a year or two 
ago, I find a magtiificent eulogy on my old school,* such 
as it was, or now appears to him to have been, between 
the years 1782 ancr 1789. It happens, very oddly, that 
my own standing at Christ's was nearly corresponding 
with his ; and, with ^11 gratitude to> him for his enthusi- 
asm for the cloisters, T think he has contrived to bring 
together whatever cau be said in praise of them, drop- 
ping all the other side Df the argument most ingeniously. 

* " Eecollectio.AS of Christ's Hospital." 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 23 

I remember L. at school ; and can well recollect that 
he had some peculiar advantages, which I and others of 
his schoolfellows had not. His friends lived in town, 
and were near at hand ; and he had the privilege of go- 
ing to see them, almost as often as he wished, through 
some invidious distinction, which was denied to us. The 
present worthy sub-treasurer to the Inner Temple can 
explain how that happened. He had his tea and hot 
rolls in a morning, while we were battening upon our 
quarter-of-a-penny loaf — our crug — moistened with at- 
tenuated small beer, in wooden piggings, smacking of 
the pitched leathern jack it was poured from. Our Mon- 
day's milk-porridge, blue and tasteless, and the pease- 
soup of Saturday, coarse and choking, were enriched for 
him with a slice of "extraordinary bread and butter," 
from the hot-loaf of the Temple. The Wednesday's mess 
of millet, somewhat less repugnant — we had three ban- 
yan to four meat days in the week — was endeared to his 
palate with a lump of double-refined, and a smack of 
ginger (to make it go down the more glibly) or the fra- 
grant cinnamon. In lieu of our Tialf-picUed Sundays, 
or quite fresh boiled beef on Thursdays (strong as caro 
equina), with detestable marigolds floating in the pail to 
poison the broth — our scanty mutton scrags on Fridays 
— and rather more savory, but grudging, portions of the 
sarne flesh, rotten-roasted or rare, on the Tuesdays (the 
only dish which excited our appetites and disappointed 
our stomachs in almost equal proportion) — he had his hot 
plate of roast- veal, or the more tempting griskin (exotics 
unknown to our palates), cooked in the paternal kitchen (a 
great thing), and brought him daily by his maid or aunt! 
I remember the good old relative (in whom love forbade 
pride) squatted down upon some odd stone in a by-nook 



24 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

of the cloisters, disclosing the viands (of higher regale 
than those cates which the ravens ministered to the Tish- 
bite) ; and the contending passions of L. at tlie unfold- 
ing. There vi^as love for the hringer; shame for the 
thing brought, and the manner of its bringing ; sympa- 
thy for those who were too many to share in it ; and, at 
to[) of all, hunger (eldest, strongest of the passions!) 
predominant, breaking down the stony fences of shame, 
M'vl awkwardness, and a troubling over-consciousness. 

I was a poor, friendless boy. My parents, and those 
who should care for me, were far away. Those few 
acquaintances of theirs, which they could reckon upon 
being kind to me in the great city, after a little forced 
notice, which they had the grace to take of me on my 
first arrival in town, soon grew tired of my holiday visits. 
They seemed to them to recur too often, though I thought 
them few enough ; and, one after another, they all failed 
me, and I felt myself alone among six hundred play- 
mates. 

Oh, the cruelty of separating a poor lad from his early 
homestead ! The yearnings which I used to have toward 
it in those unfledged years! How, in my dreams, would 
my native town (far in the west) come back, with its 
church, and trees, and faces ! How I would wake weep- 
ing, and in the anguish of my heart exclaim upon sweet 
Oalne in Wiltshire ! 

To this late hour of my life, I trace impressions left 
by the recollection of those friendless holidays. The 
long, warm days of summer never return but they oring 
with them a gloom from the haunting memory of those 
whole-day leaves, when, by some strange arrangement, 
we were turned out for the live-long day upon our own 
hands, whether we had friends to go to, or none. I 



CHRIST;* ./^P.TAL. 25 

femember those batliiiig «r icursions to the New-River, 
which L. recalls with such relish, better, I think, than 
he can — for he was a home-seeking lad, and did not 
much care for snch water pastimes: — How merrily wo 
would sally forth into the fields ; and strip under the first 
warmth of the sun ; and wanton like young dace in the 
streams; getting us appetites for noon, which those of 
us that were penniless (our scanty morning crust long 
since exhausted) had not the means of allaying— while 
the cattle, and the birds, and the fishes, were at feed 
about us and we had nothing to satisfy our cravings— 
the very beauty of the day, and the exercise of the pas- 
time, and the sense of liberty, setting a keener edge upon 
them !— How, faint and languid, finally, we would return, 
toward nightfall, to our desired morsel, half -rejoicing, 
half-reluctant, that the hours of our uneasy liberty had 
expired ! 

It was worse, in the days of winter, to go prowling 
about the streets objectless— shivering at cold windows 
of print-shops to extract a little amusement ; or haply, 
as a last resort in hopes of a little novelty, to pay a fifty- 
times repeated visit (where our individual faces should 
be as well known to the warden as those of his own 
charges) to the lions in the Tower— to whose levee, by 
courtesy, immemorial, we had a prescriptive title to ad- 
mission. 

L.'s governor (so we called the patron who presented 
us to the foundation) lived in a manner under his pater- 
nal roof. Any complaint which he had to make was 
sure of being attended to. This was understood at 
Christ's, and was an effectual screen to him against the 
severity of masters, or worse tyranny of the monitors. 
The oppressions of these young brutes are heart-sickening 



26 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

to call to recollection. I have been called out of my bed^ 
and walced for the purpose^ in the coldest winter nights 
— and this not once, but night after night — in my shirt, 
to receive the discipline of a leathern thong, with eleven 
other sufferers, because it pleased my callow overseer, 
when there has been any talking heard after we were 
gone to bed, to make the six last beds in the dormitory, 
where the youngest children of us slept, answerable for 
an offense they neither dared to commit, nor had the 
power to hinder. The same execrable tyranny drove 
the younger part of us from the fires, when our feet 
were perishing with snow ; and, under the cruelest pen- 
-*lties, forbade the indulgence of a drink of water, when 
we lay in sleepless summer nights, fevered with the sea- 
son and the day's sports. 

There was one H , who, I learned in after-days, 

was seen expiating some maturer offense in the hulks. 
(Do I flatter myself in fancying that this might be the 
planter of that name, who suffered — at ITevis, I think, or 
St. Kitts — some few years since? My friend Tobin was 
the benevolent instrument of bringing him to the gal- 
lows.) This petty Nero actually branded a boy who 
had offended him, with a red-hot iron ; and nearly starved 
forty of us with exacting contributions, to the one-half 
of our bread, to pamper a young ass, which, incredible aa 
it may seem, with the connivance of the nurse's daughter 
(a young flame of his), he had contrived to smuggle in, 
and keep upon the leads of i\iQ'ward^ as they called our 
dormitories. This game went on for better than a week, 
till the foolish beast, not able to fare well but he must 
cry roast-meat — happier than Caligula's minion, could he 
have kept his own counsel — but, foolisher, alas! than 
any of his spGoi«s in the fables— waxing fat, and kicking, 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 27 

in tlie fullness of bread, one unlucky minute would needs 
proclaim his good fortune to the world below; and, lay- 
ing out his simple throat, blew such a ram's-horn blast, 
as (toppling down the walls of his own Jericho) set con- 
cealment any longer at defiance. The client was dis- 
missed, with certain attentions, to Smithfield ; but I nev- 
er understood that the patron underwent any censure 
on the occasion. This was in the stewardship of L.'s ad- 
mired Perry. 

Under the same facile administration can L. have 
forgotten the cool impunity with which the nurses used 
to carry away openly, in open platters, for their own ta- 
bles, one out of two of every hot joint, which the care- 
ful matron had been seeing scrupulously weighed out for 
our dinners ? These things were daily practised in that 
magnificent apartment, which L. (grown connoisseur 
since, we presume) praises so highly for the grand paint- 
ings "by Verrio and others," with which it is "hung 
round and adorned." But the sight of sleek, well-fed, 
blue-coat boys in the pictures was, at that time, I be- 
lieve, little consolatory to him, or us, the living ones, 
who saw the better part of our provisions carried away 
before our faces by harpies ; and ourselves reduced (with 
the Trojan in the hall of Dido) 

"To feed our mind with idle portraiture." 

L. has recorded the repugnance of the school to gags^ 
or the f:it of fresh beef boiled ; and sets it down to some 
superstition. But these unctuous morsels are never 
grateful to young palates (children are universally fat- 
haters), and in strong, coarse, boiled meats, unsalted^ are 
detestable. A gag-eater in our time was equivalent to a 



28 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA, 

goule^ and held in equal detestation — suffered under the 

imputation — 

— " 'T was said 

He ate strange flesh." 

He was observed, after dinner, carefully to gather up 
the remnants left at his table (not many, nor very choice 
fragments, you may credit me)— and, in an especial manner, 
these disreputable morsels, which he would convey away, 
and secretly stow in the settle that stood at his bedside. 
None saw when he ate them. It was rumored that he 
privately devoured them in the night. He was watched, 
but no traces of such midnight practices were discover- 
able. Some reported ..;, on leave-days, he had been 
seen to carry. out of the bounds a large blue check hand- 
kerchief full of something. This, then, must be the ac- 
cursed thing. Conjecture next was at work to imagine 
how he could dispose of it. Some said he sold it to the 
beggars. This belief generally prevailed. He went about 
moping. None spake to him. No one would play with 
him. He was excommunicated ; put out of the pale of 
the school. He was too powerful a boy to be beaten, 
but he underwent every mode of that negative punish- 
ment which is more grievous than many stripes. Still 
he persevered. At length he was observed by two of 
his school-fellows, who were determined to get at the 
secret, and had traced him one leave-day for that pur- 
pose, to enter a large, worn-out building, such as there 
exist specimens of in Chancery Lane, which are let out to 
various scales of pauperism, with open door and a com- 
mon staircase. After him they silently slunk in, and 
followed by stealth up four flights, and saw him tap at 
a poor wicket, which was opened by an aged woman, 
meanly clad. Suspicion was now ripened into certainty. 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 29 

The informers had secured their victim. They had him 
in their toils. Accusation was formally preferred, and 
retribution most signal was looked for. Mr. Hatliaway, 
the then steward (for this happened a little after my 
time), with that patient sagacity which tempered all his 
conduct, determined to investigate the matter before he 
proceeded to sentence. The result was that the supposed 
mendicants, the receivers or purchasers of the mysteri- 
ous scraps, turned out to be the parents of , an hon- 
est couple come to decay — whom this seasonable supply 
had, in all probability, saved from mendicancy ; and this 
young stork, at the expense of his own good name, had 
all this while been only feeding the old birds! — The gov- 
ernors on this occasion, much to their honor, voted a 

present relief to the family of , and presented him 

with a silver medal. The lesson which the steward read 
upon EASH JUDGMENT, ou the occasiou of publicly deliver- 
ing the medal to , I believe would not be lost upon 

his auditory. — I had left school then, but I well remem- 
ber . He was a tall, shambling you^, with a cast 

in his eye, not at all calculated to conciliate hostile preju- 
dices. I have since seen him carrying a baker's basket. 
I think I heard he did not do quite so well by himself, as 
he had done by the old folks. 

I was an hypochondriac lad ; and the sight of a boy 
in fetters, upon the day of my first putting on the blue 
clothes, was not exactly fitted to assuage the natural ter- 
rors of initiation. I was of tender years, barely turned 
of seven ; and had only read of such things in book, or 
seen them but in dreams. I was told he had run awa/y. 
This was the punishment for the first offense. As a novice 
I was soon after taken to see the dungeons. These were 
little, square Bedlam cells, where a boy could just lie at 



30 THE ESSAYS OP ELIA. 

his length upon straw, and a blanket — a mattress, I think, 
was afterward substituted — with a peep of light, let in 
askance, from a prison orifice at top, barelj enough to 
read by. Here the poor boy was locked iu by himself 
all day, without sight of any but the porter who brought 
him his bread and water — who might not spealc to him ; 
— or of the beadle, who came twice a week to call him 
out to receive his periodical chastisement, which was al- 
most welcome, because it separated him for a brief inter- 
val from solitude : and here he was shut up by himself 
of nights out of the reach of any sound, to suffer what- 
«ever horrors the weak nerves, and superstition incident 
to his time of life, might subject him to.* This was the 
penalty for the second offense. Wouldst thou like, 
reader, to see what became of him in the next degree? 

The culprit, who had been a third time an offender, 
and whose expulsion was at this time deemed irreversi- 
ble, was brought forth, as at some solemn auto-da-fe, ar- 
rayed in uncouth and most appalling attire — all trace of 
his late " watchet weeds " carefully effaced, he was ex- 
posed in a jacket resembling those which London lamp- 
lighters formerly delighted in, with a cap of the same. 
The effect of this divestiture was such as the ingenious 
devisers of it could have anticipated. With his pale and 
frighted features, it was as if some of those disfigure- 
ments in Dante had seized upon hiiD, In this disguise- 
Ment he was brought into the hall (Z.'s fawrite stette- 

* One or two instances of lunacy, or attempted suicide, accord- 
ingly, at length convinced the governors of the impohcy of this 
part of the sentence, and the midnight torture to the sph'its "waa 
dispensed with. — This fancy of dungeons for children was a sprout 
of Howard's brain; for which (saving the rsverence due to Holy 
Paul), methinks, I could willingly spit vpon his statue. 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 3l 

room), where awaited him the whole number of his 
school-fellows, whose joint lessons and sports he was 
thenceforth to share no more ; the awful presence of the 
steward, to be seen for the last time ; of the executioner 
beadle, clad in his state-robe for the occasion ; and of 
two faces more, of direr import, because never but in 
these extremities visible. These were governors : two 
of whom bj choice, or charter, were always accustomed 
to officiate at these Ultima Supplicia; not to mitigate 
(so at least we understood it), but to enforce the utter- 
most stripe. Old Bamber Gascoigne, and Peter Aubert, 
I remember, were colleagues on one occasion, when the 
beadle turning rather pale, a glass of brandy was ordered 
to prepare him for the mysteries. The scourging ^'■as, 
after the old Roman fashion, long and stately. The lictor 
accompanied the criminal quite round the hall. We were 
generally too faint with attending to the previous disgust- 
ing circumstances, to make accurate report with our eyes 
of the degree of corporal suffering inflicted. Report, of 
course, gave out the back knotty and livid. After scourg- 
ing, he was made over, in his San Benito, to his friends, 
if he had any (but commonly such poor runagates were 
friendless), or to his parish officer, who, to enhance the 
effect of the scene, had his station allotted to him on the 
outside of the hall-gate. 

These solemn pageantries were not played off so often 
as to spoil the general mirth of the community. We had 
plenty of exercise and recreation after school-hours ; and, 
for myself, I must confess, that I was never happier than 
in them. The Upper and the Lower Grammar-Schools 
were held in the same room ; and an imaginary line only 
divided their bounds. Their character was as different 
as that of the inhabitants on the two sides of the Pyro- 



33 7/ ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

nees. The Eev mes Boyer was the Upper Master ; but 
the Rev. Mattpr Field presided over that portion of the 
apartment of »■ .ich I had the good fortune to he a mem- 
ber. We Im ' a life as careless as birds. We talked and 
did just wh?t tve pleased, and nobody molested us« We 
carried an r ccidence, or a grammar, for form ; but, for 
any trouhjc it gave us, we might take two years in get 
fcing thro'i^h the verbs deponent, and another two in for- 
geting eV. that we had learned about them. There was 
now anfi then the formality of saying a lesson, but if you 
had ixrt learned it, a brush across the shoulders (just 
enough to disturb a fly) was the sole remonstrance. 
Field never used the rod; and in truth he wielded the 
cane with no great good- will — holding it " like a dancer." 
It looked in his hands rather like an emblem than an 
instrument of authority; and an emblem, too, he was 
ashamed of. He was a good, easy man, that did not care 
to ruffle his own peace, nor perhaps set any great con- 
sideration upon the value of juvenile time. He came 
among us, now and then, but often staid away whole 
days from us ; and when he came it made no difference 
to us — he had his private room to retire to, the short 
time he staid, to be out of the sound of our noise. Our 
mirth and uproar went on. We had classics of our own, 
without being beholden to "insolent Greece or haughty 
Eome," that passed current among us — Peter Wilkins— 
the Adventures of the Hon. Captain Robert Boyle — the 
Fortunate Blue-Ooat Boy — and the like. Or we culti- 
vated a turn for mechanic and scientific operations ; mak- 
ing little sun-dials of paper ; or weaving those ingenious 
parentheses called cat-cradles; or making dry peas to 
dance upon the end of a tin pipe; or studying the art 
military over that laudable game " French and English," 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 33 

and a hundred other such devices to pass away the time 
—mixing the useful with the agreeable — as would have 
made the souls of Rousseau and John Locke chuc]4e to 
have seen us. 

Matthew Field belonged to that class of modest di- 
vines who affect to mix in equal proportion the gentle- 
man^ the scholar, and the Christian ; but, I know not 
how, the first ingredient is generally found to be the 
predominating dose in the composition. Pie was en- 
gaged in gay parties, or with his courtly bow at some 
episcopal levee, when he should have been attending 
upon us. He had for many years the classical charge 
of a hundred children, during the four or five first years 
of their education; and his very highest form seldom 
proceeded further than two or three of the introductory 
fables of Pheedrus. How things were suffered to go on 
thus, I cannot guess. Boyer, who was the proper per- 
son to have remedied these abuses, always affected, per- 
haps felt, a delicacy in interfering in a province not 
strictly his own. I havo not been without my suspicions 
that he was not altogether displeased at the contrast we 
presented to his end of the school. We were a sort of 
Helots to his young Spartans. He would sometimes, 
with ironic deference, send to borrow a rod of the Under 
Master, and then, with Sardonic grin, observe to one of 
his upper boys "how neat and fresh the twigs looked." 
While his pale students were battering their brains over 
Xenophon and Plato, with a silence as deep as that en- 
joined by the Samite, we were enjoying ourselves at our 
ease in our little Goshen. We saw a little into the se- 
crets of his disciphne, and the prospect did but the more 
reconcile us to our lot. His thunders rolled innocuou? 
for us; his storms came near, but never touched «»•» 



34 THE ESSAYS OF ELlA. 

contrary to Gideon's miracle, while all around were 
drenched, our fleece was dry,* His hoys turned out the 
het^r scholars; we, I suspect, have tlie advantage In 
temper. His pupils cannot speak of him without some- 
thing of terror allaying their gratitude ; the reinem- 
hrance of Field comes back with all the soothing images 
of indolence, and summer slumbers, and work like play, 
and innocent idleness, and Elysian exemptions, and life 
itself a "playing holiday." 

Though suflBciently removed from the jurisdiction of 
Boyer, we were near enough (as I have said) to under- 
stand a little of his system. We occasionally heard 
sounds of the Ululanfes, and caught glances of Tartarus. 
B. was a rabid pedant. His English style was cramped 
to barbarism. His Easter anthems (for his duty obliged 
him to those periodical flights) were grating as scrannel 
pipes.f He would laugh, ay, and heartily, but then it 
must be at Elaccus's quibble about Hex — or at the tristis 
severitas in vultu, or inspicere in patinas, of Terence — 
thin jests, which at their first broaching could hardly 
have had vis enough to move a Eoman muscle. He had 
two wigs, both pedantic, but of different omen. The 
one serene, smiling, fresh-powdered, betokening a mild 
day. The other, an old, discolored, unkempt, angry 

* Cowley. 

■[ In this and everything B. was the antipodes of his coadju- 
tor. While the former was digging his brains for crude anthems, 
worth a pig-nut, F. would be recreating his gentlemanly faacy 
in the more flowery walks of the Muses. A little dramatic effu- 
sion of his, under the name of Vertumnus and Pomona, is not 
yet forgotten by the chroniclers of that sort of literature. It 
was accepted by G-arrick, but the town did not give it their sanc- 
tion. B. used to say of it, in a way of half compliment, half 
iTony, that it was too classical /or representation. 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 35 

caxon, denoting frequent and bloody execution. Woe 
to the scliool when he made his morning appearance in 
his passy^ or passionate wig! No comet expounded 
surer. J. B. had a heavy hand. I have known him 
double his knotty fist at a poor, trembling child (the ma- 
ternal milk hardly dry upon its lips), with a " Sirrah, do 
you presume to set your wits at me ? " Nothing was 
more common than to see him make a headlong entry 
into the school-room, from his inner recess or library, 
and, with turbulent eye, singling out a lad, roar out, 
*'Od's my life, sirrah" (his favorite adjuration), "I have 
a great mind to whip you; " then, with as sudden a re- 
tracting impulse, fling back into his lair, and, after a 
cooling lapse of some minutes (during which all but the 
culprit had totally forgotten the context) drive headlong 
out again, piecing out his imperfect sense, as if it had 
been some Devil's Litany, with the expletory yell — ^'' and 
I WILL, too.'''' In his gentler moods, when the rabidzcs 
furor was assuaged, he had resort to an ingenious 
method, peculiar, for what I have heard, to himself, of 
whipping the boy, and reading the Debates, at the sam ) 
time ; a paragraph, and a lash between ; which in those 
times, when parliamentary oratory was most at a height 
and flourishing in these realms, was not calculated to 
impress the patient with a veneration for the diffuser 
graces of rhetoric. 

Once, and but once, the uplifted rod was known to 
fall ineffectual from his hand — when droll, squinting W., 
having been caught putting the inside of the master's 
desk to a use for which the architect had clearly not 
designed it, to justify himself, wdth great simplicity 
averred that lie did not hiow that the thing had leen 
forewarned. This exquisite irrecognition of any law 



36 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

antecedent to the oral or declaratory^ struck so irresisti- 
bly upon the fancy of all who heard it (the pedagogue 
himself not excepted) that remission was unavoidable. 

L. has given credit to B.'s great merits as an instruc- 
tor. Coleridge, in his literary life, has pronounced a 
more intelligible and ample encomium on them. The 
author of the Country Spectator doubts not to compare 
him with the ablest teachers of antiquity. Perhaps we 
cannot dismiss him better than with the pious ejacula- 
tion of C, when he heard that his old master was on 
his death-bed : " Poor J. B. ! may all bis faults be for- 
given ; and may he be wafted to bliss by little cherub- 
boys all head and wings, witb no lottoms to reproach 
his sublunary infirmities." 

Under him were many good and sound scholars bred. 
First Grecian of my time was Lancelot Pepys Stevens, 
kindest of boys and men, since Oo-grammar-master (and 
inseparable companion) with Dr. T e. What an edi- 
fying spectacle did this brace of friends present to those 
who remembered the anti-socialities of their predeces- 
sors! You never met the one by chance in the street 
without a wonder, which was quickly dissipated by the 
almost immediate sub-appearance of the other. Gener- 
ally arm-in-arm, these kindly coadjutors lightened for 
each other the toilsome duties of their profession, and 
when, in advanced age, one found it convenient to re- 
tire, the other was not long in discovering that it suited 
him to lay down the fasces also. Oh, it is pleasant, as 
it is rare, to find the same arm linked in yours at forty, 
which at thirteen helped it t^^ turn over the Cicm^o de 
Amicitid, or some tale of Antique Friendship, which 
the young heart even then was bu/ning to anticipate ! 
Co-Grecian with S. was Th , who has since executed 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 37 

with, ability various diplomatic functions at the Northern 
courts. Th was a tall, dark, saturnine youth, spar- 
ing of speech, with raven locks. Thomas Fanshaw Mid- 
dleton followed liim (now Bishop of Calcutta), a scholar 
and a gentleman in his teens. He has the reputation of 
an excellent critic ; and is author (besides the Country 
Spectator) of a Treatise on the Greek Article, against 
Sharpe. M. is said to bear his mitre high in India, 
where the regni novitas (I dare say) sufficiently justifies 
the bearing. A humility quite as primitive as that of 
Jewel or Hooker might not be exactly fitted to impress 
the minds of those Anglo- Asiatic diocesans with a rev- 
erence for home institutions, and the Church which those 
fathers watered. The manners of M. at school, though 
firm, were mild and unassuming. Next to M. (if not 
senior to him) was Richards, author of the Aboriginal 
Britons, the most spirited of the Oxford Prize Poems ; 

a pale, studious Grecian. Then followed poor S , 

ill-fated M ! of these the Muse is silent. 

" Finding some of Edward's race 
Unhappy, pass their annals by." 

Come back into memory, like as thou wert in the 
day-spring of thy fancies, with hope like a fiery column 
before thee— the dark pillar not yet turned — Samuel 
Taylor Coleridge— Logician, Metaphysician, Bard!— How 
have I seen the casual passer through the Cloisters stand 
still, entranced with admiration (while he weighed the dis- 
proportion between the speech and the gard of the young 
Mirandula), to hear thee unfold, in thy deep and sweet 
intonations, the mysteries of Jamblichus or Plotinus (for 
even in those years thou waxedst not pale at such philo- 
sophic draughts), or reciting Homer in his Greek, or 



38 THE ESSAYS OF ELTA. 

Pindar — while the walls of the old Grey Friars reechoed 
to the accents of tlie insjnred charity -hoy f — Many were 
the " wit-combats " (to dally awhile with the words of 

old Fuller) between him and C. V. Le G , "which 

two I behold like a Spanish great galleon and an English 
man-of-war ; Master Coleridge, like the former, was 
built far higher in learning, solid, but slow in his per- 
formances. C V. L., with the English man-of-war, 
lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all 
tides, tack about, and take* advantage of all winds, by 
the quickness of his wit and invention." 

Nor shalt thou, their compeer, be quickly forgotten, 
Allen, with the cordial smile, and still more cordial 
laugh, with which thou wert wont to make the old 
Cloisters shake, in tliy cognition of some poignant jest 
of theirs ; or the anticipation of some more material, 
and, peradventure, practical one, of thine own. Extinct 
are those smiles, with that beautiful countenance, with 
which (for thou wert the Nireus formosus of the school), 
in the days of thy maturer waggery, thou didst disarm 
the wrath of infuriated town damsel, who, incensed by 
provoking pinch, turning tigress-like round, suddenly 
converted by thy angel-look, exchanged the half-formed 
terrible " hi — ," for a gentler greeting — " Mess thy Jiand- 
some Jucef'' 

Next follow two, who ought to be now alive, and the 

fi'iends of Elia — the junior Le G and F , who, 

impelled, the former by a roving temper, the latter by 
too quick a sense of neglect, ill capable of enduring the 
slights poor Sizars are sometimes subject to in our seats 
of learning, exchanged their Alma Mater for the camp ; 
perishing, one by climate, and one on the plains of Sal- 
amanca : Le G , sanguine, volatile, sweet-natured ; 



THE TWO RxiCES OF MEN. 39 

F , dogged, faithful, anticipative of insult, warm- 
hearted, with something of the old Eoman height about 
him. 

Fine, frank-hearted Fr , the present master of 

Hertford, with Marmaduke T , mildest of Mission- 
aries — and both my good friends still — close the cata- 
ogue of Grecians in my time. 



THE TWO EAOES OF MEN". 

The human species, according to the best theory I 
can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the 
men who torrow^ and the men who lend. To these two 
original diversities may be reduced all those impertinent 
classifications of Gothic and Celtic tribes, white men, 
black men, red men. All the dwellers upon earth, 
" Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites," flock hither, 
and do naturally fall in with one or other of these 
primary distinctions. The infinite superiority of the 
former, which I choose to designate as the great race^ is 
discernible in their figure, port, and a certain instinctive 
sovereignty. The latter are born degraded. " He shall 
serve his brethren." There is something in the air of 
one of this cast, lean and suspicious ; contrasting with 
the open, trusting, generous manners of the other. 

Observe who have been the greatest borrowers of all 
ages — Alcibiades, Falstaff, Sir Richard Steele, our late 
incomparable Brinsley — what a family likeness in all 
four ! 

What a careless, even deportment hath your borrow- 
er ! what rosy gills ! what a beautiful reliance on Provi- 



40 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A. 

deuce doth lie manifest, taking no more thought than 
liUes ! What contempt for money, accounting it (yours 
and mine especially) no better than dross ! What a lib- 
eral confounding of those pedantic distinctions of m,eum 
and tuuml or rather, what a noble simplification of lan- 
guage (beyond Tooke), resolving these supposed oppo- 
sites into one clear, intelligible pronoun adjective ! — 
What near approaches doth he make to the primitive 
community^ to the extent of one-half of the principle at 

least ! 

He is the true taxer who " calleth all the world up to 
be taxed; " and the distance is as vast between him and 
one of U8^ as subsisted between the Augustan Majesty 
and the poorest obolary Jew that paid it tribute-pittance 
at Jerusalem ! — His exactions, too, have such a cheerful, 
voluntary air! So far removed from your sour paro- 
chial or state-gatherers, those ink-horn varlets, who 
carry their want of welcome in their faces ! He com- 
eth to you with a smile, and troubleth you with no re- 
ceipt; confining himself to no set season. Every day is 
his Candlemas, or his Feast of Holy Michael. He ap- 
plieth the lene tormentum of a pleasant look to your 
p^irse — which to that gentle warmth expands her silken 
leaves, as naturally as the cloak of the traveler, for which 
gun and wind contended ! He is the true Propontic 
which never ebbeth! The sea which taketh handsomely 
at each man's hand. In vain the victim, whom he de- 
lighteth to honor, struggles with destiny ; he is in the 
net. Lend therefore cheerfully, man ordained to lend 
—that thou lose not in the end, with thy worldly penny, 
the reversion promised. Combine not preposterously in 
thine own person the penalties of Lazarus and of Dives! 
but when thou seest the proper authority coifiing, meet 



TUE TWO RACES OF MEN. 41 

it smilingly, as it were half-way. Come, a handsome 
sacrifice! See how light he makes of it! Strain not 
courtesies with a noble enemy. 

I Reflections like the foregoing were forced upon my 
mind by the death of my old friend Ralph Bigod, Esq., 
who parted this life, on Wednesday evening, dying, as 
he had lived, without much trouble. He boasted him- 
self a descendant from mighty ancestors of that name, 
who heretofore held ducal dignities in this realm. In 
his actions and sentiments he belied not the stock to 
which he pretended. Early in life he found himself in- 
vested with ample revenues ; which, with that noble dis- 
interestedness which I have noticed as inherent in men 
of the great race^ he took almost immediate measures 
entirely to dissipate and bring to nothing : for there is 
something revolting in the idea of a king holding a pri- 
vate purse, and the thoughts of Bigod were all regal. 
Thus furnished by the very act of disfurnishment ; get- 
ting rid of the cumbersome luggage of riches, more apt 
(as one sings) 

" To slacken virtue, and abate her edge, 
Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise," 

he set forth, like some Alexander, upon his great enter- 
prise, "borrowing and to borrow I " 

In his periegesis, or triumphant progress throughout 
this island, it has been calculated that he laid a tithe 
part of the inhabitants under contribution, I reject this 
estimate as greatly exaggerated : but having had the 
honor of accompanying ray friend divers times, in his 
perambulations about this vast city, I own I was greatly 
struck at first with the prodigious number of faces we 
met, who claimed a sort of respectful acquaintance with 



42 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

us. He was one day so obliging as to explain the pke- 
nomenon. It seems, these were his tributaries; feeders 
of his exchequer ; gentlemen, his good friends (as he 
was pleased to express himself), to whom he had occa- 
sionally been beholden for a loan. Their multitudes did 
no way disconcert him. He rather took a pride in num- 
bering them; and, with Coraus, seemed pleased to be 
"stocked with so fair a herd." 

With such sources, it was a wonder how he contrived 
to keep his treasury always empty. He did it by force 
of an aphorism, which he had often in his mouth, that 
"money kept longer than three days stinks." So he 
made use of it while it was fresh. A good part he drank 
away (for he was an excellent toss-pot) ; some he gave 
away, the rest he threw away, literally tossing and hurl- 
ing it violently from him — as boys do burs, or as if it 
had been infectious — into ponds, or ditches, or deep 
holes, inscrutable cavities of the earth ; or he would 
bury it (where he would never seek it again) by a river^s 
side under some bank, which (he would facetiously ob- 
serve) paid no interest — but out way from him it must 
go peremptorily, as Hagar's offspring into the wilder- 
ness, while it was sweet. He never missed it. The 
streams were perennial which fed his fisc. Wlien new 
supplies became necessary, the first person that had the 
felicity to fall in with him, friend or stranger, was sure 
to contribute to the deficiency. For Bigod had an unde- 
niable way with him. He had a cheerful, open exterior, 
a quick, jovial eye, a bald forehead, just touched with 
gray {eana Jides). He anticipated no excuse, and found 
naae. And, waiving for a while my theory as to the 
gremt race, I would put it to the most untheorizing read- 
er, who may at times have disposable coin in his pocket, 



THE TWO RACES OF MEN. 43 

whether it is not more repugnant to tfie kindliness of ^is 
nature to refuse such a one as I am describing, than tu 
say no to a poor petitionary rogue (your bastard bor- 
rower), who, by his mumping visnomy, tells you that he 
expects nothing better; and, therefore, whose precon- 
ceived notions and expectations you do in reality so 
much less shock in the refusal. 

When I think of this man; his fiery glow of heart; 
his swell of feeling ; how magnificent, how ideal he was ; 
how great at the midnight hour ; and when I compare 
with him the companions with whom I have associated 
since, I grudge the saving of a few idle ducats, and think 
that I am fallen into the soeiety of lenders and little 
men. 

To one like Elia, whose treasures are rather cased in 
leather covers than closed in iron coffers, there is a class 
of alienators more formidable than that which I have 
touched upon ; I mean your borrowers of 'boohs — those 
mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of 
shelves, and creators of odd volumes. There is Comber- 
batch, matoliless in his depredations ! 

That foul gap in the bottom shelf facing you, like a 
great eye-tooth knocked out — (you are now with me in 
my little back study in Bloomsbury, reader !) — with th« 
huge Switzer-like tomes on each side (like the Guildhall 
giants, in their reformed posture, guardant of nothing), 
once held the tallest of my folios. Opera Bonaventura, 
choice and massy divinity, to which its two supporters 
(school divinity also, but of a lesser calibre — Bellarmine, 
and Holy Thomas) showed but as dwarfs — itself an 
Ascapart! — that Oomberbatch abstracted upon the faith 
of a theory he holds, which is more easy, I confess, for 
me to suffer by than to refute, namely, that " the title 



44 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

to property in a book (my Bonaventura, for instance) is 
in exact ratio to the claimant's powers of understanding 
and appreciating the same." Should he go on acting 
upon this theory, which of our shelves is safe? 

The slight vacuum in the left-hand case — two shelves 
from the ceiling— scarcely distinguishable but by the 
quick eye of a loser — was whilom the commodious rest- 
ing-place of Brown on Urn Burial. 0. will hardly al- 
lege that be knows more about that treatise than I do, 
who introduced it to him, and was, indeed, the first (of 
the moderns) to discover its beauties — but so have I 
known a foolish lover to praise his mistress in the pres- 
ence <)f a rival more qualified to carry her off than him- 
self. Just below, Dodsley's dramas want their fourth vol- 
ume, where Vittoria Oorombona is! The remainder 
nine are as distasteful as Priam's refuse sons, when the 
Fates 'borrowed Hector. Here stood the Anatomy of 
Melancholy, in sober state. There loitered the Complete 
Angler ; quiet as in life, by some stream-side. In yonder 
nook, John Buncle, a widower - volume, with " eyes 
closed," mourns his ravished mate. 

One justice I must do my friend, that if he sometimes, 
like the sea, sweeps away a treasure, at another time, 
aea-like, he throws up as rich an equivalent to match it. 
I have a small under-collection of this nature (my friend's 
gatherings in his various calls), picked up, he has forgot- 
ten at what odd places, and deposited with as little mem- 
ory at mine. I take in these orphans, the twice deserted. 
These proselytes of the gate are welcome as the true He- 
brews. There they stand in conjunction ; natives and 
naturalized. The latter seem as little disposed to inquire 
out their true lineage as I am, — I charge no warehouse- 
room for these deodands, nor shall ever put myself to 



THE TWO RACES OF MEN. 45 

the ungentlemanly trouble of advertising a sale of them 
to pay expenses. 

To lose a volume to 0. carries some sense and mean- 
ing in it. You are sure that he will make one hearty 
meal on your viands, if he can give no account of the 
platter after it. But what moved thee, wayward, spite- 
fal K., to he so importunate to carry off with thee, in 
spite of tears and adjurations to thee to forbear, the 
Letters of that princely woman, the thrice noble Mar- 
garet Newcastle? — knowing at the time, and knowing 
that I knew, also, thou most assuredly wouldst never 
turn over one leaf of the illustrious folio — what but the 
mere spirit of contradiction, and childish love of getting 
the better of thy friend ? — Then, worst cut of all ! to 
transport it with thee to the Galilean land — • 

" Unworthy land to harbor such a sweetness, 
A virtue in which all ennobling thoughts dwelt, 
Pare thoughts, kind thoughts, high thoughts, her sex's wonder!" 

— 'hadst thou not thy play-books, and books of jests and 
fancies, about thee, to keep thee merry, even as thou 
keepest all companies with thy quips and mirthful tales? 
Child of the green-room, it was unkindly done of thee. 
Thy wife, too, that part-French, better-part English- 
woman! — that she could fix upon no other treatise to 
bear away, in kindly token of remembering us, than the 
works of Fulke Greville, Lord Brook — of which no 
Frenchman, nor woman of France, Italy, or England, 
was ever by nature constituted to comprehend a tittle I — 
Was there not Zimmermann on Solitude ? 

Reader, if haply thou art blessed with a moderate 
collection, be shy of showing it ; or if thy heart over- 
flow eth to lend them, lend thy books; but let it be to 



46 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

such a one as S. T. 0. — ^he will return them (generally 

anticipating tlie time appointed) with usury; enriched 
with annotations tripling their value. I have had expe- 
rience. Many of these precious MSS. of his — (in matter 
oftentimes, and almost in quantity not unfrequently, 
vying with the originals) in no very clerkly hand — legi- 
ble in my Daniel ; in old Burton ; in Sir Thomas Browne; 
and those abstruser cogitations of the Greville, now, 
alas! wandering in Pagan lands. — I counsel thee, shut 
not thy heart, nor thy library, against S. T. 0. 



NEW-YEAR'S-EVE. 

Every man hath two birthdays; two days, at least, 
in every year, which set him upon i-evolving the lapse of 
time, as it affects his mortal duration. The one is that 
which in an especial manner he termeth Ms. In the 
gradual desuetude of old observances, this custom of 
solemnizing our proper birthday hath nearly passed 
away, or is left to children, who reflect nothing at all 
about the matter, nor understand anything in it beyond 
cai^} and orange. But the birtli of a New Year is of an 
interest too wide to be pretermitted by king or cobblei. 
No one ever regarded the first of January with indiifer- 
ence. It is that from which all date their time, and 
count upon what is left. It is the nativity of our com- 
mon Adam. 

Of all sound of all bells — bells, the music nighest 
bordering upon heaven — most solemn and touching Is 
the peal which rings out the Old Year. I never lieard 
it without a gathering-up of my mind to a concentration 



NEW-YEAE'S^^EVE. 47 

of all the images that have been diffused over the past 
twelvemonth ; all I have done or suffered, performed or 
ne^glected, in that regretted time. I begin to know its 
worth, as when a person dies. It takes a personal color; 
nor was it a poetical flight in a contemporary when he 
exclaimed — 

" I saw the skirts of the departing year." 

It is no more than what, in sober sadness, every one 
of us seems to be conscious of, in that awful leave-taking. 
I am sure I felt it, and all felt it with me, last night; 
though some of my companions affected rather to mani- 
fest an exhilaration at the birth of the coming year, than 
any very tender regrets for the decease of its prede- 
cessor. But I am none of those wlio — 

" Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest." 

I am naturally, beforehand, shy of novelties: new 
books, new faces, new years — from some mental twist 
which makes it difficult in me to face the prospective. 
I have almost ceased to hope ; and am sanguine only in 
the prospects of other (former) years. I plunge into 
foregone visions and conclusions. I encounter pell-mell 
with past disappointments. I am armor-proof against 
old discouragements. I forgive, or overcome in fancy, 
old adversaries. I play over again /or lo'ce^ as the game- 
sters phrase it, games for which I once paid so dear. I 
would scarce now have any of those untoward accidents 
and events of mj life reversed. I would no more alter 
them than the incidents of some well-contrived novel. 
Methinks it is better that I should have pined away sev- 
en of my goldenest years, when I was thrall to the fair 
hair and fairer eyes of Alice W — n, than that so passion- 



48 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

ate a love-adventure should be lost. It was better that 
our family should have missed that legacy which old 
Dorrell cheated us of, than that I should have at this 
moment two thousand pounds in danco, and be without, 
the idea of that specious old rogue. 

In a degree beneath manhood, it is my infirmity to 
look back upon those early days. Do I advance a para- 
dox when I say that, skipping over the intervention of 
forty years, a man may have leave to love himself, with- 
out the imputation of self-love ? 

If I know aught of myself, no one whose mind is in- 
trospective — and mine is painfully so — can have a lesF 
respect for his present identity than I have for the man 
Elia. I know him to be light and vain and humorsome ; 
a notorious ; addicted to ; averse from coun- 
sel, neither taking it nor offering it ; besides ; a 

fltaramering buffoon — what you will, lay it on and spare 
not : I subscribe to it all, and much more than thou 
canst be willing to lay at his door ; but for the child 
Elia, that "other me" there in the background, I must 
take- leave to cherish the remembrance of that young 
master, with as little reference, I protest, to this stupid 
changeling of five-and-forty as if it had been a child of 
some other house and not of my parents. I can cry over 
its patient small-pox at five and rougher mendieaments. 
I can lay its poor fevered head upon the sick-pillow at 
Christ's, and wake with it in surprise at the gentle post- 
ure of maternal tenderness hanging over it, that un- 
known had watched its sleep. I know how it shrank 
from any the least color of falsehood. God help thee, 
Elia, how art thou changed! Thou art sophisticated. 
I know how honest, how courageous (for a weakling), 
it was — how religious, how imaginative, how hopeful" 



NEW-YEAK'S-EYE. 49 

From what have I not fallen, if the child I rememher 
was indeed myself — and not some dissembling guardian 
presenting a false identity to give the rule to my un- 
practised steps and regulate the tone of my moral being! 

That I am fond of indulging, beyond a hope of sym- 
pathy, in such retrospection, may be the symptom of 
some sickly idiosyncrasy. Or, is it owing to another 
cause : simply that, being without wife or family, I have 
not learned to project myself enough out of myself; 
and, having no offspring of my own to dally with, I 
turn back upon memory, and adopt my own early idea 
as my heir and favorite ? If these speculations seem 
fantastical to thee, reader (a busy man, perchance), if I 
tread out of the way of thy sympathy, and am singular- 
ly conceited only, I retire, impenetrable to ridicule, un- 
der the phantom-cloud of Elia. 

The elders, with whom I was brought up, were of a 
character not likely to let slip the sacred observance of 
any old institution : and the ringing out of the old year 
was kept by them with circumstances of peculiar cere- 
many. — In those days the sound of those midnight 
chimes, though it seemed to raise hilarity in all around 
me, never failed to bring a train of pensive imagery 
into my fancy. Yet I then scarce conceived what it 
meant, or thought of it as a reckoning that concerned 
me. Not childhood alone, but the young man till thirty, 
never feels practically that he is mortal. He knows it, 
indeed, and, if need were, he could preach a homily on 
the fragility of life ; but he brings it not home to him- 
S3lf, any more than in a hot June we can appropriate to 
our imagination the freezing days of December. But 
now — shall I confess a truth? — I feel these audits but 
too powerfully- I begin to count the probabilities of 

4 



^ THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

mj auration, and to grudge at the expenditure of mo- 
ments and shortest periods, like misers' farthings. In 
proportion as the years both lessen and shorten, I set 
more count upon their periods, and would fain lay my 
ineffectual finger upon the spoke of the great wheel. I 
am not content to pass away "like a weaver's shuttle." 
Those metaphors solace me not, nor sw^eeten the unpal- 
atable draught of mortality. I care not to be carried 
with the tide, that smoothly bsars human life to eter- 
nity; and reluct at the inevitable course of destiny. I 
am in iove with this green earth, the face of town and 
country, the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the sweet 
security of streets. I would set up ray tabernacle here. 
I am content to stand still at the age to Avhich I am ar- 
rived, I and my friends, to be no younger, no richer, no 
handsomer. I do not want to be weaned by age, or 
drop, like mellow fruit, as they say, into the grave. — 
Any alteration, on this earth of mine, in diet or in lodg- 
ing, puzzles and discomposes me. My household gods 
plant a terrible fixed foot, and are not rooted up with- 
out blood. They do not w^illingly seek Lavinian shores. 
A new state of being staggers li.e. 

Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary w^alks, and 
summer holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the 
delicious juices of meats and fishes, and society, and th« 
cheerful glass, and candle-light, and fireside conversa- 
tions, and innocent vanities and jests, and irony itself — 
do these things go out with life ? 

Can a ghost laugh or shake his gaunt sides, when you 
are pleasant with him ? 

And you, my midnight darlings, my Folios ! must I 
part with the intense delight of having you (huge arm- 
fujs) in my embraces ? Must Isnowledge eome to me, if 



NEW-YEAR'S-EYE. 51 

Tt come at all, by some awkward experiment of in' 
tuition, and no longer by this familiar process of read- 
ing? 

Shaii I enjoy friendships there, wanting the smiling 
indications which point me to them here — tlie recogniza- 
ble face— the "sweet assurance of a look" — ? 

In winter this intolerable disinclination to dying — to 
give it its mildest name — does more especially haunt and 
beset me. In a genial August noon, beneath a swelter- 
ing sky, death is almost problematic. At those times do 
such poor snakes as myself enjoy an immortality. Thea 
we expand and burgeon. Then we are as strong again, 
as valiant again, as wise again, and a great deal taller. 
The blast tliat nips and shrinks me, puts me in thoughts 
of death. All things allied to the insubstantial, wait upon 
that master-feeling; cold, numbness, dreams, perplexity; 
moonlight itself, with its shadowy and spectral appear- 
ances — that cold ghost of the sun, or Phcebus's sickly 
sister, like that innutritions one denounced in the Canti- 
cles — I am none of her minions — I hold with the Per- 
sian. 

Whatever thwarts, or puts me out of my way, brings 
death into ray mind. All partial evils, like humors, run 
into that capital plague-sore. — I have heard some profess 
an indifference to life. Such hail the end of their exist- 
ence as a port of refuge ; and speak of the grave as of 
some soft arms, in which they rnay slumber as on a pil= 
low. Some have Vv^ooed death — but out upon thee, I say, 
thou foul, ugly phantom ! I detest, abhor, execrate, and 
(with Friar John) give thee to sixscore thousand devils, 
as in no instance to be excused or tolerated, but shunned 
as a universal viper; to be branded, proscribed, and 
spoken evil of I In no way can I be brought to digest 



52 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

thee, thou thin, melancholy Privation, or more frightfui 
and confounding Positive ! 

Those antidotes, prescribed against the fear of thee, 
are altogether frigid and insulting, like thyself. For 
what satisfaction hath a man, that he shall "lie down 
with kings and emperors in death," who in his lifetime 
never greatly coveted the society of such bedfellows ? — 
or, forsooth, that "so shall the fairest face appear?" — 
why, to comfort me, must Alice W — n be a goblin? 
More than all, I conceive disgust at those impertinent 
and misbecoming familiarities, inscribed upon your ordi- 
nary tombstones. Every dead man must take upon him- 
self to be lecturing me with his odious truism, that 
" Such as he now is I must shortly be." Not so shortly, 
friend, perhaps as thou imaginest. In the mean time I 
am alive. I move about. I am worth twenty of thee. 
Know thy betters ! Thy IsTew-Years'-days are past. I 
survive, a jolly candidate for 1821. Another cup of wine 
— and while that turncoat bell, that just now mournfully 
chanted the obsequies of 1820 departed, with changed 
notes lustily rings in a successor, let us attune to its peal 
the song made on a like occasion, by hearty, cheerful 
Mr. Cotton : 

" THE NEW TEAE. 

** Hark, the cock crows, and yon bright star 
Tells us, the day himself's not far ; 
A.nd see where, breaking from the night, 
He gilds the western hills with light. 
With him old Janus doth appear, 
Peeping into the future year, 
With such a look as seems to say, 
The prospect is not good that way. 
Thus do we rise ill sights to see, 
And 'gainst ourselves to prophesy ; 



NEW-YEAR'S-EVE. 53 

When the prophetic fear of things 
A more tormenting mischief brings, 
More full of soul-tormenting gall 

Than direst mischiefs can befall. 

But stay ! but stay ! methinks my sight. 

Better informed by clearer light, 

Discerns sereneness in that brow, 

That all contracted seemed but now. 

His reversed face may show distaste. 

And frown upon the ills are past ; 

But that which this way looks is clear, 

And smiles upon the New-born Year, 

He looks too from a place so high, 

The Year lies open to his eye ; 

And all the moments open are 

To the exact discoverer. 

Yet more and more he smiles upon 

The happy revolution. 

Why should we then suspect or fear 

The influences of a year ? 

So. smiles upon us the first morn. 

And speaks us good so soon as born ; 
Plague on't ! the last was ill enough, 
This cannot but make better proof ; 
Or, at the worst, as we brushed through 
The last, why so we may this too ; 
And then the next in reason should 
Be superexcellently good : 
For the worst ills (we daily see) 
Have no more perpetuity 
Than the best fortunes that do fall 5 
Which also bring us wherewithal 
Longer their being to support. 
Than those do of the other sort : 



5^ THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

And who has one good year in three, 
And yet repines at destiny, 
Appears ungrateful in the case, 
And merits not the good he has. 
Then let us welcome the New Guest 
With lusty brimmers of the best : 
Mirth always should Good Fortune meet, 
And renders e'en Disaster sweet : 
And though the Princess turn her back, 
Let us but line ourselves with sack. 
We better shall by far hold out. 
Till the next Year she face about." 

How say you, reader — do Dot these verses smack of 
the rough magnanimity of the old English vein? Do 
they not fortify like a cordial ; enlarging the heart, and 
productive of sweet blood, and generous spirits, iD the 
concoction? Where be those puling fears of death, just 
now expressed or affected? — Passed like a cloud — ab- 
sorbed in the purging sunlight of clear poetry — clean 
washed away by a wave of genuine Helicon, your only 
Spa for these hypochondries. — And now another cup of 
the generous! and a merry New Year, and many of 
them, to you all, my masters ! 



MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. 

" A CLEAE fire, a clean hearth, and the rigor of the 
game." This was the celebrated wish of old Sarah Battle 
(now with God), who, next to her devotions, loved a 
good game of whist. She was none of your lukewarm 
gamesters, your half-and-half players, who have no ob- 



MRS. i3at.'l::s opriioN.; o^^ umist. 55 

jection to tako a hand, if you want one to make up a 
rubber; who affirm that thej have no pleasure in win- 
ning; that thej like to win one game and lose another; 
that they can while away an hour very agreeably at a 
card-table, but are indiflferent whether they play or no; 
and will desire an adversary, who has slipped a wrong 
card, to take it up and play another. These insufferable 
triflers are the curse of a table. One of these flies will 
spoil a whole pot. Of such it may be said that they do 
not play at cards, but only play at playing at them. 

Sarah Battle was none of that breed. She detested 
them, as I do, from her heart and soul, and would not, 
save upon a striking emergency, willingly seat herself at 
the same table with them. She loved a thorough -paced 
partner, a determined enemy. She took and gave no 
concessions. She hated favors. She never made a re- 
voke, nor ever passed it over in her adversary without 
exacting the utmost forfeiture. She fought a good fight : 
cut and thrust. She held not her good sword (her cards) 
"like a dancer." She sat bolt upright, and neither 
showed you her cards nor desired to see yourg. All 
people have their blind side— their superstitions; and I 
have heard her declare, under the rose, that hearts was 
ber favorite suit. 

I never in my life— and I knew Sarah Battle many 
of the best years of it— saw her take out her snuff-box 
when it was her turn to play ; or snuff a candle in the 
middle of a game; or ring for a servant till it was fairly 
over. She never introduced, or connived at, miscellane- 
ous conversation during its process. As she einpliati- 
cally observed, cards were cards; and if I ever saw un- 
mingled d'staste in her fine last-century countenance, it 
was at tiie airs of a young gentleman of a literary turn, 



§6 THE ESSAYS OP ELIA, 

who had been with difficulty persuaded to take a hand ; 
and who, in his excess of candor, declared that he 
thought there was no harm in unbending the mind now 
and then, after serious studies, in recreations of that 
kind ! She could not bear to have her noble occupation, 
to which she wound up her faculties, considered in that 
light. It was her business, her duty, the thing she came 
into the world to do — and she did it. She unbent her 
mind afterward, over a book. 

Pope was her favorite author; his "Eape of the 
Lock " her favorite work. She once did me the favor to 
play over with me (with the cards) his celebrated game 
of ombre in that poem ; and to explain to me how far it 
agreed with, and in what points it would be found to 
differ from, tradrille. Her illustrations were apposite 
and poignant; and I had the pleasure of sending the 
substance of them to Mr. Bowles; but I suppose they 
came too late to be inserted among his ingenious notes 
upon that author. 

Quadrille, she has often told me, was her first love ; 
mt whist had engaged her maturer esteem. The for- 
mer, she said, was showy and specious, and likely to 
allure young persons. The uncertainty and quick shift- 
ing of partners — a thing which the constancy of whist 
abhors; the dazzling supremacy and regal investiture of 
spadille — absurd, as she justly observed, in the pure aris- 
tocracy of whist, where his crown and garter give him 
no proper power above his brother nobility of the aces ; 
the giddy vanity, so taking to the inexperienced, of play- 
ing alone ; above all, the overpowering attractions of a 
Sans Prendre Vole — to the triumph of which there is 
certainly nothing parallel or npproaching in the contin- 
gencies of whist — all these, she would say, make qua(l- 



MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. 57 

rille a game of captivation to the young and enthusiastic. 
But whist was the soUder game — that was her word. It 
was a long meal ; not, like quadrille, a feast of snatches. 
Oje or two rubbers might coextend in duration with an 
evening. They gave time to form rooted friendships, to 
cultivate steady enmities. She despised the chance- 
started, capricious, and ever-fluctuating alliances of the 
other. The skirmishes of quadrille, she would say, re- 
minded her of the petty, ephemeral embroilments of the 
little Italian states, depicted by Machiavel : perpetually 
changing postures and connections ; bitter foes to-day, 
sugired darlings to-morrow; kissing and scratching in a 
br.^ath ; but the wars of whist were comparable to the 
long, steady, deep-rooted, rational antipathies of the 
great French and English nations. 

A grave simplicity was what she chiefly admired in 
her favorite game. There was nothing silly in it, like 
the nob in cribbage — nothing superfluous. No flushes — 
that most irrational of all pleas that a reasonable being 
can set up ! — that any one should claim four by virtue of 
holding cards of the same mark and color, without ref- 
erence to the playing of the game, or the individual 
worth or pretensions of the cards themselves! She 
held this to be a solecism ; as pitiful an ambition at cards 
as alliteration is in authorship. She despised superfici- 
ality, and looked deeper than the colors of things. Suits 
were soldiers, she would say, and must have a uniform- 
ity of ray to distinguish them ; but what should we say 
to a foolish squire, who should claim a merit from 
dressing up his tenantry in red jackets, that never were 
to be marshaled — never to take the field ? She even 
wished that whist were more simple than it is ; and, in 
my mind, would have stripped it of some appendages, 



jS the essays of elia. 

which, in the state of human frailty, may be venially, 
and even commendably, allowed of. She saw no reason 
for the deciding of the trump by the turn of the card. 
Why not one suit always trumps? Why cw<5 colors, 
when ihe mark of the suits would have sufficiently dis- 
tinguished tnem witliout it? 

"But the eye, my dear madam, is agreeably re- 
freshed with the variety, Man is not a creature of 
pure reason — he must have his senses delightfully dp- 
pealed to. We see it in Koman Catholic countries, 
where the music and the paintings draw in many to 
worship, whom your Quaker spirit of unsensualizing 
would have kept out. You yourself have a pretty col- 
lection of paintings — but confess to me, whether walk- 
ing in your gallery at Sandham, among those clear Van- 
dykes, or among the Paul Potters in the anteroom, you 
ever felt your bosom glow with an elegant delight, at all 
comparable to that you have it in your power to expe- 
rience most evenings over a well-arranged assortment of 
the court-cards? — the pretty antic habits, like heralds in 
a procession — the gay, triumph-assuring scarlets — the 
contrasting, deadly-killing sables — the ' hoary majesty of 
spades ' — Pam in all his glory ! 

"All these might be dispensed with; and with their 
naked names upon the drab pasteboard, the game might 
go on very well, pictureless. But the deauty of cards 
would be extinguished forever. Stripped of all that io 
imaginative in them, they must degenerate into mere 
gambling. Imagine a dull, deal board, or drum-head, to 
spread them on, instead of that nice verdant carpet (next 
to Nature's), fittest arena for those courtly combatants to 
play their gallant jousts and tourneys in ! Exchange 
those delicately- turned ivory markers — (work of Chinese 



MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. 59 

artist, unconscious of their symbol, or as profanely 
slighting their true application as the arrantest Ephesian 
Journeyman that turned out those little shrines for the 
goddess) — exchange them for little bits of leather (our 
ancestors' money), or chalk and a slate ! " 

The old lady, with a smile, confessed the soundness 
of my logic ; and to her approbation of my arguments 
on her favorite topic that evening, I have always fancied 
myself indebted for the legacy of a curious cribbage- 
board, made of the finest Sienna marble, which her ma- 
ternal uncle (old Walter Plumer, whom I have elsewhere 
celebrated) brought with him from Florence : this, and 
a trifle of five hundred pounds, came to me at her death. 

The former bequest (which I do not least value) I 
have kept with religious care; though she herself, to 
confess the truth, was never greatly taken with crib- 
bage. It was an essentially vulgar game, I have heard 
her say — disputing with her uncle, who was very par- 
tial to it. She could never heartily bring her mouth to 
pronounce " Qo^^'' or " Thafs a go^ She called it an 
ungrammatical game. The pegging teased her. I once 
knew her to forfeit a rubber (a five-dollar stake), be- 
cause she would not take advantage of the turn-up knave 
which would have given it her, but which she must 
have claimed by the disgraceful tenure of declaring " two 
fer his heeUy There is something extremely genteel in 
this sort of self-denial. Sarah Battle was a gentlewoman 
born. 

Piquet she held the best game at the cards for two 
persons, though she would ridicule the pedantry of the 
terms — such as pique — ^repique — the capot — they savored 
(she thought) of affectation. But games for two, or even 
three, she never greatly cared for. She loved the quad- 



60 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

rate, br square. She would argue thus : Cards are war- 
fare ; the ends are gain, with glory. But cards are war, 
in disguise of a sport: when single adversaries encoun- 
ter, the ends proposed are too palpable. By themselves 
it is too close a fight ; with spectators it is not much bet- 
tered. No looker-on can be interested, except for a bet, 
and then it is a mere affair of money; he cares not for 
your luck sympatJietically^ or for your play. — Three are 
still worse; a mere naked war of every man against 
every man, as in cribbage, without league or alliance ; 
or a rotation of petty and contradictory interests, a suc- 
cession of heartless leagues, and not much more hearty 
infractions of them, as in tradrille. — But in square games 
{she meant whist)^ all that is possible to be attained in 
card-playing is accomplished. There are the incentives 
of profit with honor, common to every species — though 
the latter can be but very imperfectly enjoyed in those 
other games, where the spectator is only feebly a partici- 
pator. But the parties in whist are spectators and prin- 
cipals too. They are a theatre to themselves, and a 
looker-on is not wanted. He is rather worse than noth- 
ing, and an impertinence. Whist abhors neutrality, or 
interests beyond its sphere. You glory in some surpris- 
ing stroke of skill or fortune, not because a cold — or 
even an interested — by-stander witnesses it, but because 
jour partner sympathizes in the contingency. You win 
for two. You triumph for two. Two are exalted. Two 
again are mortified ; which divides their disgrace, as the 
conjunction doubles (by taking off the invidiousness) 
your glories. Two losing to two are better reconciled 
than one to one in that close butchery. The hostile 
feeling is weakened by multiplying the channels. War 
becomes a civil game. — By such reasonings as these the 



MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. gj 

old ladj was accustomed to defend her favorite pas- 
time. 

1^0 induGQrasnt could ever prevail upon her to plaj 
at anygimc, w'lsre chance entered into the composition, 
for nothing. Ohance, she would argue — and here again 
a imire the subtlety of her conclusion — chance is nothing, 
but where something else depends upon it. It is obvious 
that cannot be glory. What rational cause of exultation 
could it give to a man to turn up size ace a hundred 
times together by himself? or before spectators, where no 
stake is depending? — Make a lottery of a hundred thou- 
sand tickets with but one fortunate number — and what 
possible principle of our nature, except stupid wonder- 
ment, could it gratify to gain that number as many times 
successively, without a prize? Therefore, she disliked 
the mixture of chance in backgammon, where it was not 
played for money. She called it foolish, and those peo- 
ple idiots, who were taken with a lucky hit under such 
circumstances. Games of pure skill were as little to her 
fancy. Played for a stake, they were a mere system of 
overreaching. Played for glory, they were a mere set- 
ting of one man's wit — ^his memory, or combination- 
faculty rather — against another's; like a mock-engage- 
ment at a review, bloodless and profitless. She could 
not conceive a game wanting the spritely infusion of 
chance, the handsome excuses of good fortune. Two 
people playing at chess in a corner of a room, while 
whist was stirring in the centre, would inspire her with 
insufferable horror and ennui. Those well-cut simili- 
tudes of Castles, and Knights, the imagery of the board, 
she would argue (and I think in this case Justly), were 
entirely misplaced and senseless. Those hard head-con- 
tests can in no instance ally with the fancy. They re- 



62 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

ject form and color. A pencil and dry slate (she used 
to say) were the proper arena for such combatants. 

To those puny objectors against cards, as nurturing 
the bad passions, she would retort that man is a gaming 
animal. He must be always trying to get the better in 
something or other ; that this passion can scarcely be 
more safely expended than upon a game at cards ; that 
cards are a temporary illusion ; in truth, a mere drama ; 
for we do but play at being mightily concerned, where 
a few idle shillings are at stake; yet, during the illusion, 
we are as mightily concerned as those whose stake is 
crowns and kingdoms. They are a sort of dream-fight- 
ing; much ado; great battling, and little bloodshed; 
mighty means for disproportioned ends ; quite as divert- 
ing, and a great deal more innoxious, than many of those 
more serious games of life, which men play, without es- 
teeming them to be such. 

With great deference to the old lady's judgment in 
these matters, I think I have experienced some moments 
in my life, when playing at cards for nothing has even 
been agreeable. When I am in sickness, or not in the 
best spirits, I sometimes call for the cards, and play a 
game at piquet /"or love with my cousin Bridget — Bridget 
EHa. 

I grant there is something sneaking in it ; but with a 
toothache, or a sprained ankle — when you are subdued 
and humble — you are glad to put up with an inferior 
spring of action. 

There is such a thing in nature, I am convinced, as 
ficlc whist. 

I grant it is not the highest style of man — I deprecate 
the manes of Sarah Battle — she lives not, alas ! to whom 
I should apologize. 



A CHAPTER 01^ EARS. 63 

At siicli times, those terms which my old friend ob- 
jscted to, come in as something admissible. — I love to 
get a tierce or a quatorze, though they mean nothing. 
I am subdued to an inferior interest. Those shadows of 
winning amuse me. 

That last game I had with my sweet cousin (I capot- 
tejd her) — (dare I tell thee, how foolish I am?) — I wished 
it might have lasted forever, though we gained nothing, 
and lost nothing, though it was a mere shade of play : I 
would be content to go*on in that idle folly forever. 
The pipkin should be ever boiling, that was to prepare 
the gentle lenitive to my foot, which Bridget was doomed 
to apply after the game was over: and, as I do not much 
relish appliances, there it should ever bubble. Bridget 
and I should be ever playing. 



A CHAPTER ON EARS. 

I HAVE no ear. — 

Mistake me not, reader — nor imagine that I am b> 
ttature destitute of those exterior twin appendages, hang- 
ing ornaments, and (architecturally speaking) handsome 
volutes to the human capital. Better my mother had 
never borne me. — I am, I think, rather delicately than 
copiously provided with those conduits ; and I feel no 
disposition to envy the mule for his plenty, or the mole 
for her exactness, in those ingenious labyrinthine inlets 
— those indispensable side-intelligencers. 

Neither have I incurred, or done anything to incur, 
with Defoe, that hideous disfigurement, which constrained 
him to draw upon assurance — to feel " quite unabaslied," 



64 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA, 

and at ease upon that article. 1 %Yas never, I thank my 
stars, in the piliorj; nor, if I read them aright, is it 
within the compass of my destiny that T ever should be. 

When, therefore, I say that I have no ear, you will 
understand me to mean— for music. To say that this 
heart never melted at the concord of sweet sounds, would 
be a foul self -libel. " Wate?' jmrted from the sea'''' never 
fails to move it strangely. So does " Tn infancy.'''' But 
they were used to be sung at her harpsichord (the old- 
fashioned instrument in vogue' in those days) by a gentle- 
woman — the gentlest, sure, that ever merited the appel- 
lation — the sweetest — why sh6uld I hesitate to name 

Mrs. S , once the blooming Fanny Weatheral of the 

Temple — who had power to thrill the soul of Elia, small 
imp as he was, even in his long coats, and to make him 
glow, tremble, and biush with a passion, that not faintly 
indicated the day-spring of that absorbing sentiment 
which was afterward destined to overwhelm and subdue 
his nature quite for Alice "W n. 

I even think that sentimentally I am disposed to har- 
mony. But organically I am incapable of a tune. I 
have been practising " God save tJie King'''' all my life; 
whistling and liumming it over to myself in solitary cor- 
ners ; and am not yet arrived, they tell me, within many 
quavers of it. Yet hath the loyalty of Elia never been 
impeached. 

I am not without suspicion, that I have an undevel- 
oped faculty of music within me. For thrumming, in 
my mild way, on my friend A.'s piano, the other morn- 
ing, while he was engaged in an adjoining parlor — on 
his return he was pleased to say, "-Jie thought it could 
not he the maid ! " On his first surprise at hearing the 
keys touched in somewhat an airy and masterful way, 



A CHAPTER ON ^Atlg. 65 

not dreaming of me, his suspicions had lighted on Jenny, 
•But a grace, snatched from a superior refinement, sooi\ 
convinced him that some being — technically perhaps de- 
ficient, but higher informed from a principle common to 
all the fine arts — had swayed the keys to a mood which 
Jenny, with all her (less cultivated) enthusiasm, could 
never have elicited from them. I mention this as a proof 
of my friend's penetration, and not with any view of 
disparaging Jenny. 

Scientitically I could never be made to understand 
(yet have I taken some pains) what a note in music is ; 
or how one note should differ from another. Much less 
in voices can I distinguish a soprano from a tenor. Only 
sometimes the thorough-bass I contrive to guess at, from 
its being supereminently harsh and disagreeable. I trem- 
ble, however, for my misapplication of the simplest terms 
of that which I disclaim. While I profess my ignorance, 
I scarce know what to &ay I am ignorant of. I hate, 
perhaps, by misnomers. Sostenuto and adagio stand in 
the like relation of obscurity to me ; and 8ol^ Fa^ Mi, Ee, 
is as conjuring as Baralipton. 

It is hard to stand alone in an age like this — (consti- 
tuted to the quick and critical perception of all harmoni- 
ous combinations, I verily believe, beyond all preceding 
ages, since Jubal stumbled upon the gamut) — to remain, 
as it were, singly unimpressible to the magic influences 
of an art which is said to have such an especial stroke 
at soothing, elevating, and refining the passions. — Yet, 
rather tlian break the candid current of my confessions, 
I must avow to you that I have received a great deal 
more pain than pleasure from this so cried up faculty. 

I am constitutionally susceptible of noises. A car- 
penter's hammer, in a warm summer noon, will fret me 

5 



60 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

into more than midsummer madness. But those uncon- 
nected, unset sounds are nothing to the measured malice 
of music. The ear is p&ssive to those single strokes; 
■willingly enduring- stripes while it hath no task to con. 
To music it catmot bo passive. It will strive— mine alf 
least will — 'spite of its inaptitude, to thrid the maze; 
like an unskilled eye painfully poring upon hieroglyphics. 
I have sat through an Italian Opera, till, for sheer pain, 
and inexplicable anguish, I have rushed out into the 
noisiest places of the crowded streets, to solace myself 
with sounds which I was not obliged to follow, and get 
rid of the distracting torment of endless, fruitless, barren 
attention ! I take refuge in the unpretending assemblage 
of honest common-life sounds ; and the purgatory of the 
Enraged Musician becomes my paradise. 

I have sat at an Oratorio (that profanation of the pur- 
poses of the cheerful playhouse) watching the faces of 
the auditory in the pit (what a contrast to Hogarth's 
Laughing Audience !), immovable, or affecting some 
faint emotion, till (as some have said, that our occupa- 
tions in the next world will be but a shadow of what 
delighted us in this) I have imagined myself in soma 
cold Theatre in Hades, where some of the forms of the 
earthly one should be kept up, with none of the enjoy- 
ment ; or like that 

— " Party in a parlor 

All silent and all damned." 

Above all, these insufferable concertos, and pieces oi 
music, as they are called, do plague and embitter my ap- 
prehension. Words are something ; but to be exposed 
to an endless battery of mere sounds ; to be long a-dy- 
ing, to lie stretched upon a rack of roses ; to keep up Ian- 



A CHAPTER ON EARS. 67 

guor bj unintermitted effort; to pile honey upon sugar, 
and sugar upon honey, to an interminable, tedious sweet- 
ness ; to fill up sound with feeling, and strain ideas to 
keep pace with it ; to gaze on empty frames, and be 
forced to make the pictures for yourself; to read a book, 
all stops, and be obliged to supply the verbal matter ; to 
invent extempore tragedies to answer to the vague gest- 
ures of an inexplicable, rambling mime — these are faint 
shadows of what I have undergone from a series of the 
ablest-executed pieces of this empty instrumental music. 
I deny not that, in the opening of a concert, I have 
experienced something vastly lulling and agreeable ; 
afterward folio weth the languor and the oppression. 
Like that disappointing book in Patvnos; or, like the 
comings on of melancholy, described by Burton, doth 
Music make her first insinuating approaches : " Most 
pleasant it is to such as are melancholy given to walk 
alone in some solitary grove, betwixt wood and water, 
by some brook-side, and to meditate upon some delight- 
some and pleasant subject, which shall affe^^t him most, 
am'-hilis insania, and mentis gratissimus error- A most 
incomparnble delight to build castles in the air, to go 
smiling to themselves, acting an infinite variety of parts, 
which they suppose, and strongly imagine, thej) act, or 
that they see done. So delightsome these toys at first, 
they could spend whole days and nights without sleep, 
even whole years in such contemplations and fantastical 
meditations, w?iich are like so many dreams, and will 
hardly be drawn from them — winding and unwinding 
themselves as so many clocks, and still pleasing their 
humors until at Inst the scene turns upon a sudden, and 
they being now habitated to such meditations and soli- 
tary places, can endure no company, can think of nothing 



68 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

but harsh and distasteful subjects. Fear, sorrow, suspi' 
cion, subrusticus pudor^ discontent, cares, and weariness 
of life, surprise them on a sudden, and they can think 
of nothing else; continually suspecting, no sooner are 
their eyes open, but this infernal plague of melancholy 
seizeth on them and terrifies their souls, representing 
some dismal object to their minds ; which now, by no 
means, no labor, no persuasions, they can avoid, they 
cannot be rid of, they cannot resist." 

Something like this " scene tuejSTIng- " I have experi- 
enced at the evening-parties at the house of my good 

Catholic friend Nov , who, by the aid of a capital 

organ, himself the most finished of players, converts his 
drawing-room into a chapel, his week-days into Sun- 
days, and these latter into minor heaven.* 

When my friend commences upon one of these sol- 
emn anthems, which peradventure struck upon my heed- 
less ear, rambhng in the side aisles of the dim Abbey, 
some five-and -thirty years since, waking a new sense, 
and putting a soul of old religion into my young appre- 
hension — (whether it be tliat^ in which the Psalmist, 
weary of the persecutions of bad men, wisheth to him- 
self dove's wings; or that other^ which, with a like 
"measure of sobriety and pathos, inquireth by what 
means the young m^an shall best cleanse his mind) — a 
holy calm pervadeth me. I am for the time 

— " rapt above earth, 
And possess joys not promised at my birth." 

But when this master of the spoil, not content to 
have laid a soul prostrate, goes on, in his povver, to in- 

* " I have been there, and still would go ; 

'Tis like a little heaven below." — ^Db. Watts. 



ALL-FOOLS'-DAY. g^ 

flict more bliss than lies in her capacity to receive, im- 
patient to overcome her " earthly " with his " heavenly " 
—still pouring in, for protracted hours, fresh waves and 
fresh from the sea of sound, or from that inexhausted 
German ocean, above VN^hich, in triumphant progress, 
dolphin-seated, ride those Arions Haydn, and Mozai% 
with their attendant Tritons, BacJi, Beetlioven, and a 
eountless tribe, whom to attempt to reckon up would 
but plunge me again in the deeps— I stagger under the 
weight of harmony, reeling to and fro at my wits' end; 
clouds, as of frankincense, oppress me— priests, altars, 
censers, dazzle before me— the genius of Us religion 
hath me in her toils — a shadowy triple tiara invests the 
brow of my friend, late so naked, so ingenuous— he is 
Pope, and by him sits, like as in the anomaly of dreams, 
a she-Pope, too, tri-coroneted like himself ! — I am con- 
verted, and yet a Protestant ; at once malleus heretico- 
rum, and myself grand heresiarch : or three heresies 
centre in my person : I am Marcion, Ebion, and Oerin- 
thus— Gog and Magog— what not?— till the coming in 
of the friendly supper-tray dissipates the figment, and a 
draught of true Lutheran beer (in which chiefly my 
friend shows himself no bigot) at once reconciles me to 
the rationalities of a purer faith, and restores to me the 
genuine, unterrifying aspects of my pleasant - counte- 
nanced host and hostess. 



ALL-FOOLS'-DAY. 

The compliments of the season to my worthy masters, 
and a merry first of April to us all! 

Many happy returns of this day to you — and you— 



J'O THE ESSAYS OF ELIA, 

and you^ Sir — nay, never frown, man, nor put along face 
upon the matter. Do not we know one another? wha': 
need of ceremony among friends ? we have all a touch ci 
that same — you understand me — a speck of the motley. 
Beshrew the man who on such a day as this, the general 
festival^ should affect to stand aloof. I am none of those 
.sneakers. I am free of the corporation, and care not 
who knows it. He that meets me in the forest to-day, 
shali meet with no wiseacre, I can tell him. Stultus sum. 
Translate me that, and take the meaning of it to yourself 
for your pains. What ! man, we have four quarters of 
the globe on our side, at the least computation. 

Fill us a cup of that sparkling gooseberry — we will 
drink no wise, melancholy, pplitic port on this day — and 
let us troll the catch of Amiens — due ad me — due ad me 

— how goes it ? — 

" Here shall he see 
Gross fools as be." 

Now would I give a trifle to know historically and 
authentically who was the greatest fool that ever lived. 
I would certainly give him a bumper. Marry, of the 
present breed, I think I could without much difficulty 
name you the party. 

Eemove your cap a little farther, if you please : it 
hides my bauble. And now each man bestride his hob- 
by, and dust away his bells to what tune he pleases. I 
will give you, for my part, 

— " The crazy old church-clock, 
And the bewildered chimes." 

Good Master Empedocles, you are welcome. It is 
long since you went a salamander-gathering down Etna. 
Worse than samphire-picking by some odds. 'Tis a mer- 
cy your worship did not singe your mustacbios. 



ALL-FOOLS'-DAY. 71 

Ha ! Cleombrotus ! and what salads in faith did you 
light upon at the bottom of the Mediterranean? You 
were founder, I take it, of the disinterested sect of the 
Calenturists. 

Gebir, my old freemason, and prince of plasterers at 
Babel, bring in your trowel, most Ancient Grand! You 
have claim to a seat here at my right hand, as patron of 
the stammerers. You left your work, if I remember 
Herodotus correctly, at eight hundred million toises, or 
thereabout, above the level of the sea. Bless us, what a 
long bell yoa must have pulled, to call your top work- 
men to their nuncheon on the low grounds of Shinar! 
Or, did you send up your garlic and onions by a rocket? 
I am a rogue if I am not ashamed to show you our Mon- 
ument on Fish Street Hill, after your altitudes. Yet we 
think it somewhat. 

What, the magnanimous Alexander in tears? — cry 
baby, put its finger in its eye, it shall have another globe, 
round as an orange, pretty moppet! 

Mister Adams 'odso, I honor your coat — pray do 

us the favor to read to us that sermon, which you lent to 
Mistress Slipslop — the twenty-and-sescond in your port- 
manteau there — on Female Incontinence — the same — it 
will come in most irrelevantly and impertinently season- 
able to the time of the day. 

Good Master Raymund Lully, you look wise. Pray 
correct that error. — 

Duns, spare your definitions. I nm-t fine you a bump., 
er, or a paradox. We will have nothing said or done 
syllogistically this day. Remove those logical forms, 
waiter, that no gentleman break the tender shins of his 
apprehension stumbling across them. 

Master Stephen, you are late. — Ha! Cokes, is it you? 



72 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA, 

— Aguecheek, my dear kniglit, let me pay my devoir to 
you. — Master Shallow, your worship's poor servant to 
command. — Master Silence, I will use few words with 
you. — Slender, it shall go hard if I edge not you in some- 
where. — You six will engross all the poor wit of the com- 
pany to-day. — I know it, I know it. 

Ha! honest R , my fine old Librarian of Ludgate, 

time out of mind, art thou here again? Bless my doub- 
let, it is not over-new ; threadbare as thy stories — what 
dost thou flitting about the world at this rate? — Thy cus- 
tomers are extinct, defunct, bed-rid, have ceased to read 
long ago. — Thou goest still among them, seeing if, per- 
adventure, thou canst liawk a volume or two. — Good 
Granville S— — , thy last patron, is flown. 

" King Pandion, he is dead, 
All thy friends are lapt in lead." — 

^Nevertheless, noble R , come in, and take your 

,seat here, between Armado and Quisada; for in true 
courtesy, in gravity, in fantastic smiling to thyself, in 
courteous smiling upon others, in the goodly ornature of 
well-appareled speech, and the commendation of wise sen- 
tences, thou art nothing inferior to those accomplished 
Dons of Spain, The spirit of chivalry forsake me for- 
ever, when I forget thy singing the song of Macheath, 
which declares that he might be Jiapjty with either^ situ- 
ated between those two ancient spinsters — when I for- 
get the inimitable formal love which thou didst make, 
turning now to the one, and now to the other, with that 
Malvolian smile — as if Cervantes, not Gay, had written, 
it for his hero; and as if thousands of periods must re- 
volve, before the mirror of courtesy could have given his 
invidious prefereDce between a pair of so goodly-proper- 
tied and meritorious-equal damsels. . . . 



ALL-FOOLS'-DAY. 73 

To descend from these altitudes, and not to protract 
our Fools' Banquet beyond its appropriate day — for I 
fear the Second of April is not many hours distant — in 
sober verity I will confess a truth to thee, reader. I love 
a Fool — as naturally, as if I were of kith and kin to him. 
When a child, with childlike apprehensions, that dived 
not below the surface of the matter, I read those Po-r^- 
hle3 — not guessing at the involved wisdom — I had more 
yearnings toward that simple architect, that built his 
house upon the sand, than I entertained for his more 
cautious neighbor : I grudged at the hard censure pro- 
nounced upon the quiet soul that kept his talent ; and — 
prizing their simplicity beyond the more provident, and, 
to my apprehension, somewhat unfeminine wariness of 
their competitors — I felt a kindliness, that almost amount- 
ed to a tendre, for those five thoughtless virgins. — I have 
never made an acquaintance since, that lasted : or a friend- 
ship, that answered ; with any that had not some tinct- 
ure of the absurd in their characters. I venerate an 
honest obliquity of understanding. The more laughable 
blunders a man shall commit in your company, the niore 
tests he giveth you, that he will not betray or overreach 
you. I love the safety, which a palpable hallucination 
"warrants ; the security, which a word out of season rati- 
fies. And take my word for this, reader, and say a fool 
told it you, if you please, that he who hath not a dram 
of folly in his mixture, hath pounds of much worse mat- 
ter in his composition. It is observed, that "the fool- 
isher the fowl or fish — woodcocks — dotterels — cods'- 
heads, etc.— the finer the flesh thereof," and what are 
eommonly the world's received fools, but such whereof 
the world is not worthy? and what have been some of 
the kindliest patterns of our species, but so many darlings 



74 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A. 

of absurdity, minions of the goddess, and her white boys? 
— Reader, if yoa wrest my words beyond their fair con- 
struction, it is you and not I, that are the April Fool. 



A QUAKERS' MEEimG, 

" Still-born Silence ! thou that art 
Flood-gate of the deeper heart ! 
Offspring of a heavenly kind ! 
Frost o' the mouth, and thaw o' the mind ! 
Secrecy's confidant, and He 
Who makes religion mystery ! 
Admiration's speaking'st tongue ! 
Leave, thy desert shades among, 
Reverend hermits' hallowed cells, 
Where retired Devotion dwells I 
With thy entiiusiasms come, 
Seize our tongues, and strike us dumb."* 

Readee, wouldst thou know what true peace and 
quiet mean; wouldst thou find a refuge from the noises 
and clamors of the multitude; wouldst thou enjoy at 
once solitude and society; wouldst thou possess the 
depth of thine own spirit in stillness, without being shut 
out from the consolatory faces of thy species; wouldst 
thou be alone, and yet accompanied; solitary, yet not 
desolate; singular, yet not without some to keep thee 
in countenance; a unit in aggregate; a simple in c-jui* 
posite : come with me into a Quakers' meeting. 

Dost thou love silence deep ms that '' before the winds 
were made?" go not out into the wilderness; descend 

* From " Poems of all Sorts," by Eichard Fleckuo, 1653. 



A QUxiORS' MEETING. 75 

not into the profundities of the earth ; shut not up thy 
casements, nor pour wax into the little cells of thy ears, 
with little-faithed, self-mistrusting Ulysses. — Eetire with 
me into a Quakers' meeting. 

For a man to refrain even from good words, and co 
hold his peace, it is commendable ; but for a multitudeij 
it is great mastery. 

What is the stillness of the desert compared with 
this place? what the uncommunicating muteness of 
fishes? — here the goddess reigns and revels. — "Boreas, 
and Oesias, and Argestes loud," do not with their inter- 
confounding uproars more augment the brawl— nor the 
waves of the blown Baltic with their clubbed sounds — 
than their opposite (Silence her sacred self) is multiplied 
and rendered more intense by numbers, and by sympa- 
thy. She, too, hath her deeps that call unto deeps. Nega- 
tion itself hath a positive more and less ; and closed eyes 
would seem to obscure the great obscurity of midnight. 

There are wounds which an imperfect solitude cannot 
heal. By imperfect I mean that which a man enjoyeth 
by himself. The perfect is that which he can sometimes 
attain in crowds, but nowhere so absolutely as in a 
Quakers' meeting.— Those first hermits did certainly un- 
derstand this principle when they retired into Egyptian 
solitudes, not singly, but in shoals, to enjoy one another's 
want of conversation. The Carthusian is bound to hi§ 
brethren by this agreeing spirit of incommunicative- 
ness. In secular occasions, what so pleasant as to be 
reading a book through a long, winter evening, with a 
friend sitting by— say a wife— he, or she, too (if that be 
probable), reading another, without interruption or oral 
communicaton ? — can there be no sympathy without the 
gabble '"f words ? — away with this innumau, -shy, single, 



76 THE l:SSAYS OV ELIA. 

shade-and-cavem-haimting solitariness. Give me, Master 
Zimraermann, a sympathetic solitude. 

To pace along in the cloisters or Bide-aisles of some 
cathedral, time-stricken — 

" Or under hanging mountains, 
Or by the fall of fountains "— 

is but a vulgar luxury, compared with that which those 
enjoy who come together for the purposes of more com- 
plete, abstracted solitude. This is the loneliness "to be 
felt." — The Abbey church of "Westminster hath nothing 
so solemn, so spirit-soothing, as the naked walls and 
benches of a Quakers' meeting. Here are no tombs, no 
inscriptions, 

— " Sands, ignoble things. 
Dropped from the ruined sides of kings "^ 

but here is something which throws Antiquity herself 
into the foreground — Silence — eldest of things — lan- 
guage of old Night — primitive Discourser — to which the 
insolent decays of mouldering grandeur have but arrived 
by a violent, and, as we may say, unnatural progression. 

" How reverend is the view of these hushed heads, 
Looking tranquillity ! " 

Nothing - plotting, naught - caballing, unmischievous 
synod! convocation without intrigue! parliament with= 
out debate! what a lesson dost thou read to council, and 
to consistory! — if my pen treat of you lightly — as haply 
it will wander — yet my spirit hath gravely felt the wis- 
dom of your custom, when sitting among you in deepest 
peace, which some out-wel]ing tears would rather confirm 
than disturb, I have reverted to the times of your begin- 
nings, and the sowings of the seed by Fox and Dewesburj, 



A QUAKERS' MEETING. 7'/ 

I have witnessed that which brought before my eyes your 
heroic tranquillity, inflexible to the rude jests and serious 
violences of the insolent soldiery, republican or royalist, 
sent to molest you — for ye sate betwixt the fires of two 
persecutions, the outcast and offscouring of church and 
Dresbytery. — I have seen the reeling sea-ruffian, who had 
wandered into your receptacle with the avowed inten«^ 
tion of disturbing your quiet, from the very spirit of the 
place receive in a moment a new heart, and presently sit 
among ye as a lamb among lambs. And I remember 
Penn before his accusers, and Fox in the bail- dock, 
where he was lifted up in spirit, as he tells us, and " the 
judge and the jury became as dead men under his feet." 
Reader, if you are not acquainted with it, I would 
recommend to you, above all church-narratives, to read 
Sewel's History of the Quakers. It is in folio, and is 
the abstract of the Journals of Fox and the primitive 
Friends. It is far more edifying and affecting than any- 
thing you will read of Wesley and his colleagues. Here 
is nothing to stagger you, nothing to make you mistrust, 
no suspicion of alloy, no drop or dreg of the worldly or 
ambitious spirit. You will here read the true story of 
that much-injured, ridiculed man (who, perhaps, hath 
been a by-word in your mouth) — James ISTaylor : what 
d"readful sufferings, with what patience, he endured, 
even to the boring through of his tongue with red-hot 
irons, without a murmur; and with what strength of 
mind, when the delusion he had fallen into, which they 
stigmatized for blasphemy, had given way to clearer 
thoughts, he could renounce his error, in a strain of the 
beautif ullest humility, yet keep his first grounds, and be 
a Quaker still ! — so different from the practice of your 
commor converts from enthusiasm, who, when the/ 



78 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

apostatize, apostatize all, and think they can never get 
far enough from the sooietj of their former errors, even 
to the renunciation of some saving truths, with which 
they had been mingled, not implicated. 

Get the V/ritings of John Woolman by heart ; and 
!ove the early Quakers. 

How far the followers of these good men in cur days 
have kept to the primitive spirit, or in what propor- 
tion they have substituted formality for it, the Judge of 
Spirits can alone determine. I have seen faces in their 
assemblies, upon which the dove sate visibly brooding. 
Others again I have watched, when my thoughts should 
have been better engaged, in which I could possibly de- 
tect nothing but a blank inanity. But quiet was in ail, 
and the disposition to unanimity, and the absence of the 
fierce controversial workings. If the spiritual preten- 
sions of the Quakers have abated, at least they make few 
pretenses. Hypocrites they certainly are not, in their 
preaching. It is seldom, indeed, that you shall see one 
get up among them to hold forth. Only now and then a 
trembling female, generally ancient, voice is heard — you 
cannot guess from what part of the meeting it proceeds 
— with a low, buzzing, musical sound, laying out a few 
words which "she thought might suit the condition of 
some present," with a quaking diffidence, which leaves 
no possibility of supposing that anything of female van- 
ity was mixed up, where the tones were so full of ten- 
darness, and a restraining modesty. The men, for what 
I have observed, speak seldomer. 

Once only, and it was some years ago, I witnessed a 
sample of the old Foxian orgasm. It was a man of giant 
stature, who, as Wordsworth phrases it, might have 
danced " from head to foot equipt in iron mail." His 



A QTJAKEHS' MEETING. 79 

frame was of iron, too. But he was malleable. I saw 
him shake all over with the spirit — I dare not say of de- 
hision. The strivings of the outer man were unuttera- 
ble — he seemed not to speak, but to be spoken from. I 
saw the strong man bowed down, and his knees to fail- 
Ms joints all seemed loosening — it was a figure to set oS 
against Paul Preaching — the words he uttered were few. 
and sound— he was evidently resisting his will — keeping- 
down his own word-wisclom with more mighty effort, 
than the world's orators strain for theirs. " He had been 
a WIT in his youth," he told us, with expressions of a so- 
ber remorse. And it was not till long after the impres- 
sion had begun to wear away, that I was enabled, with 
something like a smile, to recall the striking incongruity 
of the confession — understanding the term in its worldly 
acceptation — with the frame and physiognomy of the 
person before me. His brow would have scared away 
the Levities — the Jocos Risus-que — faster than the Loves 
fled the face of Dis at Enna. By irdt, even in his youth, 
I will be sworn he understood something far within th© 
limits of an allowable liberty. 

More frequently the meeting is broken up without a 
word having been spoken. But the mind has been fed. 
You go away with a sermon not made with hands. You 
have been in the milder caverns of Trophonius ; or as in 
some den, where that fiercest and savagest of all wild 
creatures, the Tongue, that unruly member, has strange- 
J^y lain tied up and captive. You have bathed with still- 
ness. Oh, when the spirit is sore fretted, even tired to 
sickness of the janghngs, the nonsense-noises of the 
world, what a balm and a solace it is, to go and seat 
yourself, for a quiet half-hour, upon some undisputed 
corner of a bench, among the gentle Quakers ! 



go THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

Their garb and stillness conjoined, present a uniform 
ity, tranquil and herd-like — as im the pasture — "forty 
feeding like one." — 

The very garments of a Quaker seem incapable of re- 
ceiving a soil ; and cleanliness in them to be something 
more than the absence of its contrary. Every Quakeress 
Is a lily; and when they come up in bands to their 
Whitsun-conferences, whitening the easterly streets of 
the metropolis, from all parts of the United Kingdom, 
tliey show like troops of the Shining Ones. 



THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 

My reading has been lamentably desultory and im- 
methodical. Odd, out-of-the-way, old English plays, and 
treatises, have supplied me with most of my notions, and 
ways of feeling. In everything that relates to science, I 
am a whole Encyclopaedia behind the rest of the world. 
I should have scarcely cut a figure among the franklins, 
or country gentlemen, in King John's days. I know less 
geography than a schoolboy of six weeks' standing. To 
me a map of old Ortelins is as authentic as Arrowsmith. 
I do not know whereabout Africa merges into Asia; 
whether Ethiopia lie in one or other of those great divis- 
ions; nor can form the remotest conjecture of the posi- 
tion of New South Wales, or Yan Diemen's Land. Yet 
do I hold a correspondence with a very dear friend in 
the first-named of these two Terrse IncognitfB. I have 
no astronomy. I do not know where to look for the 
Bear, or Charles's Wain; the place of any star; or the 
name of any of them at sight. I guess at Yenus only by 



THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 81 

her brightness — and if the sun on some portentous morn 
were to make his first appearance in the West, I verily 
believe, that, while all the world were gasping in appre- 
hension about me, I alone should stand unterrified, from 
sheer incuriosity and want of observation. Of history 
and chronology I possess some vague points, such as one 
cannot help picking up in the course of miscellaneous 
study ; but I never deliberately sat down to a chronicle, 
even of my own country. I have most dim apprehen- 
sions of the four great monarchies ; and sometimes the 
Assyrian, sometimes the Persian, floats as first^ in my 
fancy. I make the widest conjectures concerning Egypt, 
and her shepherd kings. My friend if., with great pains- 
taking, got me to think I understood the first proposition 
in Euclid, but gave me over in despair at the second. I 
am entirely unacquainted with the modern languages; 
and, like a better man than myself, have "small Latin 
and less Greek." I am a stranger to the shapes and 
texture of the commonest trees, herbs, flowers — not from 
the circumstance of my being town-born — for I should 
have brought the same inobservant spirit into the world 
with me, had I first seen it " on Devon's leafy shores " — 
and am no less at a loss among purely town-objecta, 
tools, engines, mechanic processes. Not that I affect 
ignorance — but my head has not many mansions, nor 
spacious ; and I have been obliged to fill it with such 
cabinet curiosities as it can hold without aching. I 
sometimes wonder how I have passed my probation 
with so little discredit in the world, as I have done, upon 
so meagre a stock. But the fact is, a man may do very 
well with a very little knowledge, and scarce be found 
out, in mixed company; everybody is so much more 
ready to produce his own, than to call for a display of 

6 



H3 I'HE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

your acquisitions. But in a tete-d~tete there is no shuf- 
fling. The truth will out. There is nothing which I 
dread so much as the being left alone for a quarter of an 
hour with a sensible, vv^ ell-informed man, that does not 
know me. I lately got into a dilemma of this sort. 

In one of my daily jaunts between Bishopsgate and 
Shacklewell, the coach stopped to take up a staid-looking 
gentleman, about the wrong side of thirty, who was 
giving his parting directions (while the steps were ad- 
iusting), in a tone of mild authority, to a tall youth, who 
seemed to be neither his clerk, his son, nor his servant, 
but something partaking of all three. The youth was 
dismissed, and we drove on. As we were the sole pas- 
sengers, he naturally enough addi-essed his conversation 
to me; and we discussed the merits of the fare, the ci- 
vility and punctuality of the driver ; the circumstance of 
an opposition coach having been lately set up, with the 
probabilities of its success — to all which I was enabled to 
return pretty satisfactory answers, having been drilled 
into this kind of etiquette by some years' daily practice 
of riding to and fro in the stage aforesaid — when he sud- 
denly alarmed me by a startling question, whether I had 
seen the show of prize cattle that morning in Smithfield? 
Kow, as I had not seen it, and do not greatly care for 
such sort of exhibitions, I was obliged to return a cold 
negative. He seemed a little mortified, as well as aston- 
ished, at my declaration, as (it appeared) he was just come 
fresh from the sight, and doubtless had hoped to com- 
pare notes on the subject. However, he assured me that 
I had lost a fine treat, as it far exceeded the show of last 
year. We were now approaching Norton Folgate, when 
the sight of some shop-goods ticlceted freshened him up 
into a dissertation upon the cheapness of cottons this 



THE OLD AND THE NEW SCPIOOLMASTER. 83 

spring. I was now a little in heart, as the nature of my 
morning avocations had brought me into some sort of 
familiarity with the raw material-, and I was surprised 
to find how eloquent I was becoming on the state of the 
India market — when, presently, he dashed my incipient 
vanity to the earth at once, by inquiring whether I had 
ever made any calculation as to the value of the rental 
of all the retidl shops in London. Had he asked of me, 
what song the Siren sang, or what name Achilles as- 
sumed when he hid himself among women, I might, with 
Sir Thomas Browne, have hazarded a " wide solution." * 
My companion saw my embarrassment, and, the alms- 
houses beyond Shoreditch just coming in view^, with 
great good-nature and dexterity, shifted his conversation 
to the subject of public charities; which led to the com- 
parative merits of provision for the poor in past and 
present times, with observations on the old monastic 
institutions, and charitable orders; but, finding me 
rather dimly impressed with some glimmering notions 
from old poetic associations, than strongly fortified with 
any speculations reducible to calculation pn the subject, 
he gave the matter up ; and, the country beginning to 
open more and more upon us, as we approached the 
turnpike at Kingsland (the destined termination of hie 
journey), he put a home-thrust upon me, in the most 
unfortunate position he could have chosen, by advancing 
some queries relative to the ISTorth-Pole Expedition. 
While I was muttering out something about the pano- 
rama of those strange regions (which I had actually seen), 
by way of parrying the question, the coach stopping re- 
lieved me from any further apprehensions. My com- 
panion getting out, left me in the comfortable possessioj 
* Urn Burial. 



84 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

of my ignorance ; and T heard him, as he went off, put= 
ting questions to an outside passenger, who had alighted 
with him, regarding an epidemic disorder, that had been 
rife about Dalston, and which my friend assured him had 
gone through five or six schools in that neighborhood. 
The truth now flashed upon me, that my companion was 
a schoolmaster ; and that the youth, whom he had parted 
from at our first acquaintance, must have been one of 
the bigger boys, or the usher. He was evidently a kind- 
hearted man, who did not seem so much desirous of pro- 
voking discussion by the questions which he put, as of 
obtaining information at any rate. It did not appear 
that he took any interest, either, in such kind of inqui- 
ries, for their own sake ; but that he was in some way 
bound to seek for knowledge. A greenish-colored coat, 
which he had on, forbade me to surmise that he was a 
clergyman. The adventure gave birth to some reflections 
on the difference between persons of his profession in 
past and present times. 

Rest to the souls of those fine old pedagogues ; the 
breed, long since extinct, of the Lilys and the Linacres. 
who, believing that all learning was contained in the 
languages which they taught, and despising every other 
acquirement as superficial and useless, came to their 
task as to a sport ! Passing from infancy to age, they 
dreamed away all their days as in a grammar-school. 
Revolving in a perpetual cycle of declensions, conjuga- 
tions, syntaxes, and prosodies ; renewing constantly the 
occupations which had charmed their studious child- 
hood ; rehearsing continually the part of the past ; life 
must have slipped from them at last like one day. They 
were always in their first garden, reaping harvests of 
their golden time, among their Flori and their Spici^ 



THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 85 

legia; in Arcadia still, but kings! the ferule of their 
sway not much harsher, but of like dignity with that 
mild sceptre attributed to King Basileus; the Greek and 
Latin, their stately Pamela and their Philoclea ; with the 
occasional duncery of some untoward tyro, serving for 
a refreshing interlude of a Mopsa or a clown Daraoetas \ 

With what a savor doth the Preface to Oolet's, or 
(as it is sometimes called) Paul's Accidence, set forth ! 
" To exhort every man to the learning of grammar, that 
intendeth to attain the understanding of the tongues, 
wherein is contained a great treasury of wisdom and 
knowledge, it would seem but vain and lost labor; for 
so much as it is known, that nothing can surely be ended 
whose beginning is either feeble or faulty ; and no build- 
ing be perfect whereas the foundation and groundwork 
is ready to fall, and unable to hold the burden of the 
frame." How well doth this stately preamble (compara- 
ble to those which Milton coramendeth as "having been 
the usage to prefix to some solemn law, then first promul- 
gated by Solon or Lycurgus ") correspond with and illus- 
trate that pious zeal for conformity, expressed in a suc- 
ceeding clause, which would fence about grammar-rules 
with the severity of faith articles ! — " as for the diversity 
of grammars, it is well profitably taken away by the 
Kings Majesties wisdom, who foreseeing the inconveni- 
ence, and favourably providing the remedie, caused one 
kind of grammar by sundry learned men to be diligently 
drawn, and so to be set out, only everywhere to be 
taught, for the use of learners, and for the hurt in 
changing of schoolmaisters." What a gusto in that 
which follows : " wherein it is profitable that he [the pu- 
pil] can orderly decline his noun, and his verb." His noun ! 

The fine dream is fading away fast; and the least 



^e THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

concern of a teacher in the present day is to inculcate 
crammar-rules. 

The modern schoolmaster is expected to know a little 
of everything, because his pupil is required not to be en- 
tirely ignorant of anything. He must be superficially, 
if I may so say, omniscient. He is to know something 
«f pneumatics ; of chemistry; of whatever is curious, or 
proper to excite the attention of the youthful mind ; an 
insight into mechanics is desirable, with a touch of sta- 
tistics; the quality of soils, etc., botany, the constitution 
of his country, cum multis aliis. You may get a notion 
of some part of his expected duties by consulting the 
famous Tractate on Education addressed to Mr. Hartlib. 

All these things — these, or the desire of them — he is 
expected to instill, not by set lessons from professors, 
which he may cliarge in the bill, but at school intervals, 
as he walks the streets, or saunters through green fields 
(those natural instructors), with his pupils. The least 
part of what is expected from him, is to be done in 
school-hours. He must insinuate knowledge at the 
mollia tempora fandi. He must seize every occasion — 
the season of the year ; the time of tiie day ; a passing 
cloud; a rainbow; a wagon of hay; a regiment of sol- 
diers going by — to inculcate something useful. He can 
receive no pleasure from a casual glimpse of Nature, but 
must catch at it as an object of instruction. He must 
interpret beauty into the picturesque. He cannot relish 
a beggar-man, or a gypsy, for thinking of the suitable 
improvement. Nothing comes to him, not spoiled by 
the sophisticating medium of moral uses. The Universe 
— that Great Book, as it has been called — is to him in- 
deed, to all intents and purposes, a book out of which 
he is doomed to read tedious homilies to distasting 



THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER gy 

schoolboys. Vacations themselves are none to him, he 
is onlj rather worse off than before ; for commonly he 
has some intrusive upper boy fastened upon him at such 
times; some cadet of a great family; some neglected 
lump of nobility, or gentry ; that he must drag after him 
to the play, to the Panorama, to Mr. Bartley's Orrery, 
to the Panopticon, or into the country, to a friend's 
house, or his favorite watering-place. Wherever he 
goes, this uneasy shadow attends him. A boy is at his 
board, and in his path, and in all his movements. He is 
boy-rid, sick of perpetual boy. 

Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among 
their mates ;Cbut they are unwholesome companions for 
grown people^/ The restraint is felt no less on the one 
side than on the other. Even a child, that " plaything 
for an hour," tires always. The noises of children, 
playing their own fancies — as I now hearken to them 
by fits, sporting on the green before my window, while 
I am engaged in these grave speculations at my neat 
suburban retreat at Shackle well — by distance made more 
sweet — inexpressibly take from the labor of my task. 
It is like writing to music. They seem to modulate my 
periods. They ought at least to do so — for in the voice 
of that tender age there is a kind of poetry, far unlike 
the harsh prose accents of man's conversation. I should 
but spoil their sport, and diminish my own sympathy 
for them, by mingling in their pastime. 

I would not be domesticated all my days with a per- 
son of very superior capacity to my own — not, if I know 
myself at all, from any considerations of jealousy or self- 
comparison, for the occasional communion with such 
minds has constituted the fortune and felicity of my life 
— but the habit of too constant intercourse with spirits 



88 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA, 

above you, instead of raising yon, keeps you down. 
Too frequent doses of original thinking from others re- 
strain what lesser portion of that faculty you may pos- 
? sess of your own. You get entangled in another man's 
i mind, even as you lose yourself in another man's grounds. 
Y"ou are walking with a tall varlet, whose strides out- 
pace yours to lassitude. The constant operation of such 
potent agency would reduce me, I am convinced, to im- 
becility. You may derive thoughts from others; your 
way of thinking, the mould in which your thoughts are 
cast, must be your own. Intellect may be imparted, but 
not each man's intellectual frame. — 

As little as I should wish to be always thus dragged 
upward, as little (or, rather, still less) is it desirable to 
be stunted downward by your associates. The trumpet 
does not more stun you by its loudness than a whisper 
teases you by its provoking inaudibility. 

Why are we never quite at our ease in the presence 
of a schoolmaster ? Because we are conscious that he is 
not quite at his ease in ours. Tie is awkward and out of 
place in the society of his equals. He comes like Gulli- 
ver from among his little people, and he cannot fit the 
stature of his understanding to yours. He cannot meet 
you on the square. He wants a point given him, like an 
indifferent whist-player. He is so used to teaching that 
he wants to be teaching you. One of these professors, 
Tipon my complaining that these little sketches of mine 
were anything but methodical, and that 1 was unable to 
make them otherwise, kindly offered to instruct me in 
the method by which young gentlemen in Ms seminary 
were taught to compose English themes. — The jests of a 
schoolmaster are coarse or thin. They do not tell out 
of school. He is under the restraint of a formal or di- 



THE OLD AND TBE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 89 

dactive hypocrisy in company, as a clergyman is under a 
moral one. He can no more let his intellect loose in so- 
ciety than the other can his inclinations. He is forlorn 
among his coevals ; his juniors cannot be his friends. 

" 1 take blame to myself," said a sensible man of this 
profession, writing to a friend respecting a youth who 
had quitted his school abruptly, " that your nephew was 
not more attached to me. But persons in my situation 
are more to be pitied than can well be imagined. We 
are surrounded by young and, consequently, ardently 
affectionate hearts, but we can never hope to share an 
atom of their affections. The relation of master and 
scholar forbids this. ' How pleasing this must 5e to you, 
lioio I envy your feelings 1 ' my friends will sometimes say 
to me, when they see young men whom I have educated 
return, after some years' absence from school, their eyes 
shining with pleasure while they shake hands with their 
old master, bringing a present of game to me or a toy to 
mj wife, and thanking me in the warmest terms for my 
care of their education. A holiday is begged for the 
boys ; the house is a scene ^f happiness ; I, only, am 
sad at heart. — This fine-opirited and warm-hearted 
youth, who fancies he repays his master with gratitude 
for the care of his boyish years — this young man, in the 
eight long years I watched over him with a parent's anx- 
iety, never could repay rae with one look of genuine 
feeling. He was proud when I praised ; he was submis- 
sive when I reproved him ; but he did never love me ; 
and what he now mistakes for gratitude and kindness 
for me is but the pleasant sensation which all persons 
feel at revisiting the scenes of their boyish hopecs and 
fears ; and the seeing on equal terms the man they were 
accustomed to look up to with reverence. My wife, 



90 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

too," this interesting correspondent goes on to 8ay, "my 
once darling Anna, is the wife of a schoolmaster. — When 
I married her — knowing that the wife of a schoolmaster 
ought to he a husy, notable creature, and fearing that 
my gentle Anna would ill supply the loss of my dear, 
bustling mother, just then dead, who never sat still, was 
in every part of the house in a moment, and whom I 
was obliged sometimes to threaten to fasten down in a 
chair to save her from fatiguing herself to death — I ex- 
pressed my fears that I was bringing her into a way o£ 
life unsuitable to her ; and she, who loved me tenderly, 
promised for my sake to exert herself to perform the 
duties of her new situation. She promised, and she has 
kept her word. What wonders will not woman's lovp 
perform ? My house is managed with a propriety and 
decorum unknown in other schools ; my boys are well 
fed, look healthy, and have every proper accommoda- 
tion; and all this performed with a careful economy 
that never descends to meanness. But I have lost my 
gentle, lielpless Anna I When we sit down to enjoy an 
hour of repose after the fatigue of the day, I am com- 
pelled to listen to what have been her useful (and they 
are really useful) employments through the day, and 
what she proposes for her to-morrow's task. Her heart 
and her features are changed by the duties of her situa- 
tion. To the boys, she never appears other than the 
masterh wife^ and she looks up to me as the l)oy''s master^ 
to whom all show of love and affection would be highly 
improper, and unbecoming the dignity of her situation 
and mine. Yet this my gratitude forbids m to hint to 
her. For my sake she submitted to be this altered creat- 
ure, and can I reproach her for it ? " — For the communi- 
catior. of this letter, I am indebted to my cousin Bridget, 



VALENTINE'S-DAY. 91 



VALENTINE'S-DAY. 

Hail to tliy returning festival, old Bishop Valentine! 
Great is thy name in the rubric, thou venerable arch- 
flamen of Hymen ! Immortal go - between ! who and 
what manner of person art thou? Art thou but a name^ 
iypifying the restless principle which impels poor hu- 
mans to seek perfection in union ? or wert thou, indeed, 
a mortal prelate, with thy tippet and thy rochet, thy 
apron on, and decent lawn sleeves? Mysterious person- 
age! like unto thee, assuredly, there is no other mitred 
father in the calendar; not Jerome, nor Ambrose, nor 
Cyril, nor the consigner of undipped infants to eternal 
toiTnents, Austin, whom all mothers hate ; nor he who 
hated ail motTiers, Origen ; nor Bishop Bull, nor Arch- 
bishop Parker, nor Whitgift. Thou comest attended 
with thousands and ten thousands of little loves, and 
the air is 

" Brushed with the hiss of rustling wings." 

Singing Cupids are thy choristers and thy precentors ; 
and instead of the crosier, the mystical arrow is borno 
before thee. 

In other words, this is the day on which those charm- 
ing little missives, ycleped Valentines, cross and inter- 
cross each other at every street and turning. The weary 
and all forspent twopenny-postman sinks beneath a load 
of delicate embarrassments not his ov.'n. It is scarcely 
credible to what an extent this ephemeral courtship is 
carried on in this loving town, to the great enrichment 
of porters, and detriment of knockers and bell- wires. 
In these little visual interpretations, no emblem is so 
ccinmon as the heart — that little, three-cornered expo- 



92 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

nent of our hopes and fears — the bestuck and bleeding 
heart. It is twisted and tortured into more allegories 
and affectations than an opera-hat. What authority we 
have in history or mythology for placing the headquar- 
ters and metropolis of God Cupid in this anatomical seat 
rather than in any other, is not very clear ; but we have 
got it, and it will serve as well as any other. Else we 
might easily imagine — upon some other system which 
might have prevailed for anything which our pathology 
knows to the contrary — a lover addressing his mistress, 
in perfect simplicity of feeling, " Madam, my liver and 
fortune are entirely at your disposal ; " or putting a deli- 
cate question, "Amanda, have you a midriff to be- 
stow ? " But custom has settled these things, and avvard- 
ed the seat of sentiment to the aforesaid triangle, while 
its less fortunate neighbors wait at animal and anatomi- 
es distance. 

Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and 
all rural sounds, exceed in interest a Icnock at the door. 
It "gives a very echo to the throne where Hope is seat- 
ed." But its issues seldom answer to this oracle within. 
It is so seldom that just the person we want to see comes. 
But of all the clamorous visitations the welcomest in ex- 
pectation is the sound that ushers in, or seems to usher 
in, a Valentine. As the raven him.self was hoarse that 
announced the fatal entrance of Duncan, so the knock of 
the postman on this day is light, airy, confident, and be- 
fitting one that briugeth good tidings. It is less mechan- 
ical than on other days. You will say, " That is not the 
post I am sure." Visions of Love, of Cupids, of Hymens ! 
— delightful eternal commonplaces, which, " having been, 
will always be; " which no schoolboy nor schoolman can 
write away ; having your irreversible throne in the fan' 



VALENTINE'S-DAY. 93 

cy and affections — what are your transports, when the 
liappv maiden, opening with careful finger, careful not 
to break the emblematic seal, bursts upon the sight of 
some well-designed allegory, some type, some youthful 
fancy, not withoxit verses — 

" Lovers all, 
A madrigal," 

or some such device, not over abundant in sense — ^young 
Love disr-laims it — and not quite silly — something be- 
tween wind and water, a chorus where the sheep might 
almost join the shepherd, as they did, or as I apprehend 
they did, in Arcadia. 

All Valentines are not foolish ; and I shall not easily 
forget thine, my kind friend — if I may have leave to call 
you so — ^E. B. E, B, lived opposite a young maiden, 
whom he had often seen, unseen, from his parlor-win- 
dow in — e Street. She was all joyousness and inno- 
cence, and just of an age to enjoy receiving a Valentine, 
and just of a temper to bear the disappointment of miss- 
ing one with good-humor. E. B. is an artist of no com- 
mon powers — in the fancy parts of designing, perhaps, 
inferior to none. His name is known at the bottom of 
many a well-executed vignette in the way of his profes- 
sion, but no further — for E. B. is modest, and the world 
meets nobody half-way. E. B. meditated how he could 
repay this young maiden for many a favor which she had 
done him unknown ; for when a kindly face greets us, 
though \but passing by, and never knows us again, nor 
we it, we should feel it as an obligation ; and E. B. did. 
This good artist set himself at work to please the dam- 
sel. It was just before Valentine's-day three years since. 
He wrought, unseen and unsuspected, a wondrous work. 



94 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

We need not say it was on the finest gilt paper with i)ot% 
ders — full, not of common hearts and heartless allegory, 
but all the prettiest stories of love from Ovid, and older 
poets than Ovid (lor E. B. is a scholar). There was Py- 
ramus and Thisbe, and be sure Dido was not forgot, nor 
Hero and Leander, and swans more than sang in Cayster, 
with mottoes and fanciful devices, such as beseemed — a 
work in short of magic. Iris dipped the woof. This on 
Valentine's-eve he commended to the all-swallowing, in- 
discriminate orifice — O ignoble trust ! — of the common 
post ; but the humble medium did its duty, and from his 
watchful stand the next morning he saw the cheerful 
messenger knock, and by-and-by the precious charge de- 
livered. He saw, unseen, the happy girl unfold the Val- 
entine, dance about, clap her hands, as one after one the 
pretty emblems unfolded themselves. She danced about, 
not with light love, or foolish expectations, for she had 
no lover ; or, if she had, none she knew that could have 
created those bright images which delighted her. It was 
more like some fairy present; a God-send, as our famil- 
iarly pious ancestors termed a benefit received where 
the benefactor was unknown. It would do her no harm. 
It would do her good forever after. It is good to love 
the unknown. I only give this as a specimen of E. B. 
and his modest way of doing a concealed kindness. 

Good-morrow to my Valentine, sings poor Ophelia ; 
and no better wish, but v/ith better auspices, we wish to 
all faithful lovers, who are not too wise to despise old 
legends, but are content to rank thsmselves humble dio- 
cesans of old Bishop Valentine and his true church. • 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 95 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 

I am of a constitution so general, that it consorts and sym- 
pathizeth with all things ; I liave no antipathy, or rather idi- 
osyncrasy in anything. Those natural repugnancies do not 
touch me, nor do I behold with prejudice the French, Italian, 
Spaniard, or Dutch. — Religio Medici. 

That the author of the Eeligio Medici, mounted up- 
on the airy stilts of abstraction, conversant about notion^ 
al and conjectural essences ; in whose categories of Be^ 
ing the possible took the upper hand of the actual; 
should have overlooked the impertinent individualities 
of such poor concretions as mankind, is not much to be 
admired. It is rather to be wondered at, that in the 
genus of animals he should have condescended to distin- 
guish that species at all. For myself — earth-bound and 
fettered to the scene of my activities — 

" Standing on earth, not rapt above the sky," 

I confess that I do feel tlie differences of mankind, na- 
tional or individual, to an unhealthy excess. I can look 
with no indifferent eye upon things or persons. What- 
ever is, is to me a matter of taste or distaste; or when 
once it becomes indifferent, it begins to be disrelishingo 
I am, in plainer words, a bundle of prejudices — made up 
of likings and dislikings — the veriest thrall to sympathies, 
apathies, antipathies. In a certain sense, I hope it may 
be said of me that I am a lover of my species. I can feel 
for all indifferently, but I cannot feel toward all equally. 
The more purely-English word that expresses sympathy, 
will better explain my meaning. I can be a friend to a 



96 THE ESSAYS OF ELTA. 

worthy man, who upon another account cannot be my 
nmte or felloic. I cannot UTce all people alike.* 

I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and 
am obliged to desist from the experiment in despair. 
They cannot like mo — and in truth, I never knew one of 
that nation who attempted to do it. There is something 
more plain and ingenuous in their mode of proceeding. 
We know one another at first sight. There is an order 
of imperfect intellects (under which mine must be con- 
tent to rank) which in its constitution is essentially anti- 
Caledonian, The owners of the sort of faculties I allude 
to, have minds rather suggestive than comprehensive. 
They have no pretenses to much clearness or precision 

* I would be understood as confining myself to the suhject of 
imperfect sympatlnes. To nations or classes of men there can be 
no direct antipathy. There may be individuals born and con- 
stellated so opposite to another individual nature that the same 
sphere cannot hold them. I have met with my moral antipodes, 
and can believe the story of two persons meeting (who never saw 
one another before in their lives) and instantly fighting. 
" — "We by proof find there should be 
'Twixt man and man sucla an antipathy, 
That though he can show no just reason why 
For any former wrong or injury, 
Can neither find a blemish in his fame. 
Nor aught in face or feature justly blame. 
Can challenge or accuse him of no evil. 
Yet, notwithstanding, hates him as a devil." 

The lines are from old Hey wood's " Hierarchic of Angels," and 
he subjoins a curious story in confirmation, of a Spaniard who at- 
tempted to assassinate a King Ferdinand of Spain, and being put 
to the rack could give no other reason for tlie deed but an invet- 
erate antipathy which he had taken to the first sight of the King, 
" — The cause which to that act compelled him 
Was, he ne'er loved him since he first beheld him.'* 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 97 \ 

\ 
in their ideas, or in their manner of expressing them. \ 
Their intellectual wardrobe (to confess fairly) has few 
whole pieces in it. They are content with fragments 
and scattered pieces of Truth. She presents no full front 
to them — a feature or side-face at the most. Hints and 
glimpses, germs and crude essaj^s at a system, is the ut- 
most they pretend to. They beat up a little game per- 
adventure — and leave it to knottier heads, more robust 
constitutions, to run it down. The light that lights them 
is not steady and polar, but mutable and shifting: wax- 
ing, and again waning. Their conversation is according- 
ly. They will throw out a random word in or out of 
season, and be content to let it pass for what it is worth. 
They cannot speak always as if they were upon their oath 
— but must be understood, speaking or writing, with some 
abatement. They seldom wait to mature a proposition, 
but e'en bring it to market in the green ear. They de- 
light to impart their defective discoveries as they arise, 
without waiting for their development. They are no 
systematizers, and would but err more by attempting it. 
iheir minds, as I said before, are suggestive merely. The 
brain of a true Caledonian (if I am not mistaken) is con- 
stituted upon quite a different plan. His Minerva is born 
in panoply. Yon are never admitted to see his ideas in 
thsir growth — if, indeed, they do grow, and are not rather 
put together upon principles of clock-work. You never 
catch his mind in an undress. He never hints or suggests 
anything, but unlades his stock of ideas in perfect order 
and completeness. He brings his total wealth into com- 
pany, and gravely unpacks it. His riches are always 
about him. He never stoops to catch a glittering some- 
thing in your prer^ence to share it with you, before he 
tjuite knows whether it be true touch or not. You can^ 
7 



98 THE ESSAYS OP ELIA. 

not cry halves to anything that he finds. He does not 
find, but brings. You never witness his first apprehen- 
sion of a thing. His understanding is always at its me- 
ridian — you never see the first dawn, the early streaks. 
— He has no falterings of self-suspicion. Surmises, 
guesses, misgivings, half-intaitions, semi-consciousnesscs- 
partial illuminations, dim instincts, embryo conceptions, 
have no place in his brain, or vocabulary. The twilight 
of dubiety never falls upon him. Is he orthodox — he has 
no doubts. Is he an infidel — he has none either. Be- 
tween the affirmative and the negative there is no border- 
land with him. Y^ou cannot hover with him upon the 
confines of truth, or wander in the maze of a probable 
argument. He always keeps the path. You cannot 
make excursions with him — for he sets you right. His 
taste never fluctuates. His morality never abates. He 
cannot compromise, or understand middle actions. There 
can be but a right and a wrong. His conversation is as 
a book. His affirmations have the sanctity of an oath. 
You must speak upon the square with him. He stops a 
metaphor like a suspected person in an enemy's country. 
" A healthy book! " — said one of his countrymen to me, 
who had ventured to give that appellation to John Bun- 
cle. — " Did I catch rightly what you said ? I have heard 
of a man in health, and of a healthy state of body, but I 
do not see how that epithet can be properly applied to a 
book." Above all, you must beware of indirect expres- 
sions before a Caledonian. Clap an extinguisher upon 
your irony, if you are unhappily blest with a vein of it. 
Remember you are upon your oath. I have a print of 
a graceful female after Leonardo da Vinci, which I was 
showing off to Mr. . After he had examined it mi- 
nutely, I ventured to ask him how he liked my beauty 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 99 

(a foolish name it goes by among mj friends)— when he 
A very gravely assured me that " he had considerable re- 
spect for my character and talents" (so he was pleased 
to say), " but had not given himself much thought about 
the degree of my personal pretensions." The miscon- 
ception staggered me, but did not seem much to discon- 
cert him. Persons of this nation are particularly fond 
'of affirming a truth— which nobody doubts. They do 
not so properly affirm, as annunciate it. They do, in- 
deed, appear to have such a love of truth (as if, like vir- 
tue, it were valuable for itself) that all truth becomes 
equally vi*luable, whether the proposition that contains 
it be new or old, disputed, or such as is impossible to be- 
come a subject of disputation. I was present not long 
sinbe at a party of North Britons, where a son of Burns 
was expected; and happened to drop a silly expression 
(in my South British way), that I wished it were the 
father instead of the son — when four of them started up 
at once to inform me that "that was impossible, be- 
cause he was dead." An impracticable wish, it seems, 
was more than they could conceive. Swift has hit off 
this part of their character, namely, their love of truth, 
in his biting way, but with an illiberality that necessa- 
rily confines the passage to the margin.* The tedious- 

* There are some people who think they suf&ciently acquit 
themselves, and entertain their company, with relating facts of 
no consequence, not at all out of the road of such common inci- 
desits as happen every day ; and this I have observed more fre- 
quently among the Scots than any other nation, who are very 
careful not to omit the minutest circumstances of time or place ; 
which kind of discourse, if it were not a little relieved by the 
uncouth terms and phrases, as well as accent and gesture pecul- 
iar to that country, would be hardly tolerahlQ.— Bints toward an 
Essay on Conversation. 



100 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

ness of these people is certainly provoking. I wonder 
if they ever tu*e one another? In my early life I liad a 
passionate fondness for the poetry of Burns. I have 
sometimes foolishly hoped to ingratiate myself with his 
countrymen by expressing it. But I have always found 
Uiat a true Scot resents your admiration of his compat- 
riot, even more than he would your contempt of him. 
The latter he imputes to your *' imperfect acquaintance 
with many of the words which he uses ; " and the same 
objection makes it a presumption in you to suppose that 
you can admire him. Thomson they seem to have for- 
gotten. Smollett they have neither forgotten nor for- 
given, for his delineation of Eory and his companion, 
upon their first introduction to our metropolis. Speak 
of Smollett as a great genius, and they will retort upon 
you Hume's History compared with Ms Continuation of it. 
What if the historian had continued Humphrey Clinker ? 
I have, in the abstract, "no disrespect for Jews. They 
are a piece of stubborn antiquity, compared with which 
Stonehenge is in its nonage. They date beyond the pyra- 
mids. But I should not care to be in habits of familiar 
intercourse with any of that nation. I confess that I 
have not the nerves to enter their synagogues. Old 
prejudices cling about me. I cannot shake off the story 
of Hugh of Lincoln. Centuries of injury, contempt, and 
hate, on the one side — of cloaked revenge, dissimulation, 
and hate, on the other, between our and their fathers, 
must and ought to affect the blood of the children. I 
cannot believe it can run clear and kindly yet ; or that a 
few fine words, such as candor, liberality, the light of a 
nineteenth century, can close up the breaches of so dead- 
ly a disunion. A Hebrew is nowhere congenial to me. 
He is least distasteful on 'Change — for the mercantile 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 101 

spirit levels all distinctions, as all are beauties in the 
dark. I boldly confess that I do not relish the approxi- 
mation of Jew and Christian, which has become so fash- 
ionable. The reciprocal endearments have, to me, some- 

^ thing hypocritical and unnatural in them. I do not like 
to see the Church and Synagogue kissing and congeeing 
in awkward postures of an affected civility. If they are 
converted, v/hy do they not cornQ over to us altogether? 
Why keep up a form of separation when the life of it is 
fled? If they can sit vv^ith us at table, why do they keck 
at our cookery ? I do not understand these half convert- 
ites. Jews Christianizing — Christians Judaizing — puzzle 
me. I like fish or flesh. A moderate Jew is a more 
confounding piece of anomaly than a wet Quaker. The 

spirit of the synagogue is essentially separative. B 

would have been more in keeping if he had abided by 
the faith of his forefathers. 'There is a fine scorn in his 

"^ace, which IsTature meant to be of Christians. / The 

Hebrew spirit is strong in him, in spite of his prbsely- 
tism. He cannot conquer the Shibboleth. How it breaks 
out when he sings, " The Children of Israel passed through 
the Eed Sea!" The auditors, for the moment, are as 
Egyptians to him, and he rides over our necks in tri- 
umph. There is no mistaking him. B has a strong 

expression of sense in his countenance, and it is confirmed 
by his singing. ^The foundation of his vocal excellence 
is sense, ^ He sings with understanding, as Kemble de- 
livered dialogue. He would sing the Commandments, 
and give an appropriate character to each prohibition. 
His nation, in general, have not over-sensible counte- 
nances. How should thev? — but you seldom see a silly 
expression among them, i Gain, and the pursuit of gain, 
sharpen a man's visage. \ I never heard of an idiot be 



102 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

ing born among them. Some admire the Jewish female 
physiognomy. I admire it — but with treanbling. Jael 
had those full, dark, inscrutable eyes. 

In the negro countenance you will often meet with 
,.---s«trong traits of bejoignity. I have felt yearnings of ten- 
derness toward some of these faces — or rather masks — 
that have looked out kindly upon one in casual encoun- 
ters in the streets and highways. I love what Fuller 
beautifully calls — these "images of God cut in ebony." 
But I should not like to associate with them, to share 
my meal^^and my good nights with them — because they 
are black. 

I love Quaker ways and Quaker worship, I venerate 
the Quaker principles. It does me good for the rest of the 
day when I meet any of their people in my path. "When 
I am ruffled or disturbed by any occurrence, the sight, 
or quiet voice of a Quaker, acts upon me as a ventilator, 
lightening the air, and taking off a load from the bosom. 
But I cannot like the Quakers (as Desdemona would say) 
" to live with them." I am all over sophisticated — with 
humors, fancies, craving hourly sympathy. I must have 
books, pictures, theatres, chit-chat, scandal, Jokes, am- 
biguities, and a thousand whimwhams, which their sim- 
pler taste can do without. I should starve at their 
primitive banquet. My appetites are too high for the 
salads which (according to Evelyn) Eve dressed for the 
angel, my gusto too excited 

" To sit a guest with Daniel at his pulse." 

The indirect answers which Quakers are often found 
to return to a question put to them, may be explained, I 
think, without the vulgar assumption that they are 
more given to evasion and equivocating than other peo- 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 103 

pie. They naturally look to their words more carefully, 
and are more cautious of committing themselves. They 
have a peculiar character to keep up on this head. They 
stand in a manner upon their veracity. A Quaker is by 
law exempted from taking an oath. The custom of 
resorting to an oath in extreme cases, sanctified as it is 
by all religious antiquity, is apt (it must be confessed) 
to introduce into the laxer sort of minds the notion of 
two kinds of truth — the one applicable to the solemn 
affairs of justice, and the other to the common proceed- 
ings of daily intercourse. As truth bound upon the con- 
science by an oath can be but truth, so in the common 
affirmations of the shop and the market-place a latitude 
is expected, and conceded upon questions wanting this 
solemn covenant. Something less than truth satisfies. 
It is common to hear a person say, " You do not expect 
me to speak as if I were upon my oath." Hence a great 
deal of incorrectness and inadvertency, short of false- 
hood, creeps into ordinary conversation ; and a kind of 
secondary or laic-truth is tolerated, where clergy-truth — 
oath-truth, by the nature of the circumstances, is not 
required. A Quaker knows none of this distinction. 
His simple affirmation being received, upon the most 
sacred occasions, without any further test, stamps a 
value upon the words which he is to use upon the most 
indifferent topics of life. He looks to them, naturally, 
with more severity. Yon can have of him no more 
than his word. He knows, if he is caught tripping in a 
casual expression, lie forfeits, for himself at least, his 
claim to the invidious exemption. He knows that his 
syllables are weighed — and how far a consciousness of 
this particular watchfulness, exerted against a person, 
has a tendency to produce indirect answers, and a di- 



104 TEE ESSAYS OF ELTA. 

verting of the question by honest means, might be il- 
lustrated, and the practice justified, by a more sacred 
example than is proper to be adduced upon this occa- 
sion. The admirable presence of mind, which is noto- 
rious in Quakers upon ail contingencies, might be traced 
to this imposed self- watchfulness — If it did not seem 
rather an humble and secular scion of that old stock of 
religious constancy, which never bent or faltered, in the 
Primitive Friends, or gave way to the winds of persecu- 
tion, to the violence of judge or accuser, under trials and 
racking examinations. " You will never be the wiser, if 
I sit here answering your questions till midnight," said 
one of those upright Justicers to Penn, who had been 
putting law-cases with a puzzling subtlety. " Thereafter 
as the answers may be," retorted the Quaker. The as- 
tonishing composure of this people is sometimes ludi- 
crously displayed in lighter instances. I was traveling 
in a stage-coach with three male Quakers, buttoned up 
in the straitest nonconformity of their sect. We stopped 
to bait at Andover, where a meal, partly tea-apparatus, 
partly supper, was set before us. My friends confined 
themselves to the tea-table. I in my way took supper. 
"When the landlady brought in the bill, the eldest of my 
companions discovered that she had charged for both 
meals. This was resisted. Mine hostess was very clam- 
orous and positive. Some mild arguments were used on 
the part of the Quakers, for which the heated mind of 
the good lady seemed by no means a fit recipient. The 
guard came in with his usual peremptory notice. The 
Quakers pulled out their money and formally tendered 
it — so much for tea — I, in humble imitation, tendering 
mine — ibr the supper which I had taken. She would not 
relax in her demand. So they all three quietly put up their 



WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS. 105 

silver, as did myself, and marched out of the room, the 
eldest and gravest going first, with myself closing up the 
rear, who thought I could not do hetter than follow the 
example of such grave and warrantable personages. "We 
got in. The steps went up. The coach drove oif. The 
murmurs of mine hostess, not very indistinctly or ambig- 
uously pronounced, became after a time inaudible — and 
now my conscience, which the whimsical scene had foi 
a while suspended, beginning to give some twitches, I 
waited, in the hope that some justification would be 
oftered by these serious persons for the seeming injustice 
of their conduct. To my great surprise not a syllable 
was dropped on the subject. They sat as mute as at a 
meeting. At length the eldest of them broke silence, 
by inquiring of his next neighbor, " Hast thee heard 
how indigos go at the India House ? " and the question 
operated as a soporific on my moral feeling as far as 
Exeter. 



WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS, 

We are too hasty when we set down our ancestors in 
the gross for fools, for the monstrous mconsistencies (as 
they seem to us) involved in their creed of witchcraft. 
In the relations of this visible world v/e find them to 
have been as rational, and shrewd to detect an historic 
anomaly, as ourselves. But when once the invisible 
world was supposed to be opened, and the lawless agen- 
cy of bad spirits assumed, what measures of probability, 
of decency, of fitness, or proportion — of that whicii dis- 
tinguishes the likely from the palpable absurd — could 
they have to guide them in the rejection or admission of 



106 THE ESSAYS OF ELTA. 

any particular testimony? Tliat maidens pined away, 
wasting inwardly as their waxen images consumed be- 
fore a fire — that corn was lodged, and cattle lamed — that 
whirlwinds uptore in diabolic revelry the oaks of the 
forest- or that spits and kettles only danced a fearful-in- 
nocent vagary about some rustic's kitchen when no wind 
was stirring — were all equally probable where no law of 
agency was understood. That the prince of the powers 
of darkness, passing by the flower and pomp of the earth, 
should lay preposterous siege to tlie weak fantasy of in- 
digent eld, has neither likelihood nor unlikehood a priori 
to us, who have no measure to guess at his policy, or 
standard to estimate what rate those anile souls may 
fetch in the devil's market. Nor, when the wicked are 
expressly symbolized by a goat, was it to be wondered at 
so much that he should come sometimes in that body, 
and assert his metaphor. That the intercourse was 
opened at all between both worlds was, perhaps, a mis- 
take ; but that once assumed, I see no reason for disbe- 
lieving one attested story of this nature more than an- 
other on the score of absurdity. There is no law to 
judge of the lavvlesF, or canon by which a dream may be 
criticised. 

I have sometimes thought that I could not have exist- 
ed in the days of received witchcraft ; that I could not 
have slept in a village where one of those reputed hags 
dwelt. Our ancestors were bolder or more obtuse. Amid 
the universal belief that these wretches were in league 
with the author of all evil, holding hell tributary to their 
muttering, no simple justice of the peace seems to have 
scrupled issuing, or silly head-borough serving, a warrant 
upon them — as if they should subpoena Satan ! Prosper© 
in his boat, with his books and wand about him, suffers 



WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS. 107 

L..ti^^!^t io be conveyed away at the mercy of his ene- 
n.ies to HTL unknown island. He might have raised a 
storm or two, we think, on the passage. His acquies- 
cence is in exact analogy to the non-resistance of witches 
to the coLh,tituted powers. "What stops the fiend in 
Spenser from tearing Guy on to pieces — or who had 
made it a condition of his p^'ey, that Guyon must take 
assay of the glorious bait? — we have no guess. We do 
not know the laws of that country. 

From my childhood I was extremely inquisitive about 
witches and witch-stories. My maid, and more legenda- 
ry aunt, supplied me with good store. But I shall men- 
tion the accident which directed my curiosity originally 
into this channel. In my father's book-closet, the " His- 
tory of the Bible," by Stackhouse, occupied a distin- 
guished station. The pictures with which it abounds — 
one of the ark, in particular, and another of Solomon's 
temple, delineated with all the fidelity of ocular admeas- 
urement, as if the artist had been upon the spot — attract- 
ed my childish attention. There was a picture, too, of 
the Witch raising up Samuel, which I wish that I had 
never seen. We shall come to that hereafter. Stack- 
house is in two hage tomes — and there was a pleasure in 
removing folios of i5'nat magnitude, which, with infinite 
straining, was as much as I could manage, from the situa- 
tion which they occupied upon an upper shelf. I have not 
met with the work from that time to this, but I remember 
it consisted of Old Testament stories, orderly set down, 
with the objection appended to each story, and the solution 
of the objection regularly tacked ^o that. The objection 
was a summary of whatever diilicultie3 had been opposed 
to the probability of the hibtory, by the shrewdness of 
ancient or modern infidelity, drawn dp with an almost 



108 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

complimentary excess of candor. The solution was brief, 
modest, and satisfactory. The bane and antidote were 
both before you. To doubts so put, and so quashed, 
there seemed to be an end forever. The dragon lay dead, 
for the foot of the veriest babe to trample on. But — 
like as was rather feared than realized from that slain 
monster in Spenser — from the womb of those cruslied 
errors young dragonets would creep, exceeding the prow- 
ess of so tender a Saint George as myself to vanquish. 
The habit of expecting objections to every passage, set 
me upon starting more objections, for the glory of find- 
ing a solution of my own for them. I became stag- 
gered and perplexed, a skeptic in long-coats. The pretty 
Bible-stories which I had read, or heard read in church, 
lost their purity and sincerity of impression, and v/ere 
turned into so many historic or chronologic theses to be 
defended against whatever impugners. I was not to dis- 
believe them, but — the next thing to that — I was to be 
quite sure that some one or other would or had disbe- 
lieved them. Kext to making a child an infidel, is the let- 
ting him know that there are infidels at all. Credulity is 
the man's weakness, but the child's strength. Oh, how 
ugly sound scriptural doubts from the mouth of a babe 
and a suckling-! I should have lost myself in these mazes, 
and have pined away, I think, with such unfit sustenance 
as these husks afl;orded, but for a fortunate piece of ill- 
fortune, which about this time befell me. Turning over 
the picture of the ark with too much haste, I unhappily 
made a breach in its ingenious fabric ; driving my incon- 
Biderate fingers right through the two larger quadrupeds 
— the elephant and the camel — that stare (as well they 
might) out of the last two windows next the steerage in 
that unique piece of naval architecture. Stackhouse was 



WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS. 109 

henceforth looked up, aad became an interdicted treas- 
ure. With the book, the objections and solutions gradu- 
ally cleared out of my head, and have seldom returned 
since in any force to trouble me. But there was one im- 
pression which I had imbibed with Stackhouse, which 
ao look or bar could shut out, and which was destined to 
^ry my childish nerves rather more seriously. — That de- 
testable picture. 

I was dreadfully alive co nervous terrors. The night- 
finiQ, solitude, and the dark, were my hell. The suffer- 
ings I endured in this nature would justify the expres- 
sion. I never laid my head on my pillow, I suppose, 
from the fourth to the seventh or eighth year of my life — 
so far as memory serves in things so long ago — without 
an assurance, which realized its own prophecy, of seeing 
soma frightful spectre. Be old Stackhouse then acquitted 
in part, if I say that to his picture of the witch raising 
up Samuel — (O that old man covered with a mantle !) — 
I owe, not my midnight terrors, the hell of my infancy, 
but the shape and manner of their visitation. It was he 
who dressed up for me a hag that nightly sate upon my 
pillow — a sure bedfellow, when my aunt or my maid was 
far from me. All day long, while the book was per- 
mitted me, I dreamed waking over his delineation, and 
at night (if I may use so bold an expression) awoke into 
sleep, and found the vision true. I durst not, even in 
the daylight, once enter the chamber where I slept, 
without my face turned to the window, aversely from 
the bed where my witch-ridden pillow was. Parents do 
not know what they do when they leave tender babes 
alone to go to sleep in the dark. The feeling about for 
a friendly arm — the hoping for a familiar voice, when 
they awake screaming, and find none to soothe them, 



110 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

what a terrible shaking it is to their poor nerves! The 
keeping them up till midnight, through candle-light and 
the unwholesome hours, as they are called, would, I am 
satisfied, in a medical point of view, prove the better 
caution. That detestable picture, as I have said, gave the 
fashion to my dreams, if dreams they were, for the scene 
of them was invariably the room in which I lay. Had I 
never met with the picture, the fears would have come 
self-pictured in some shape or other — 

" Headless bear, black man, or ape " — 
but, as it was, my imaginations took tlmt form. It is 
not book, or picture, or the stories of foolish servants, 
which create these terrors in children. They can at 
most but give them a direction. Dear little T. H., who 
of all children has been brought up with the most scru- 
pulous exclusion of every taint of superstition, who was 
never allowed to hear of goblin or apparition, or scarce- 
ly to be told of bad men, or to read or hear of any dis- 
tressing story, finds all this world of fear, from which 
he has been so rigidly excluded db extra^ in his own 
" thick-coming fancies ; " and from his little midnight 
pillow, this nurse-child of optimism will start at shapes, 
unborrowed of tradition, in sweats to which the reveries 
of the cell-damned murderer are tranquillity. 

Gorgons, and Hj^dras, and Chiniicras dire — stories of 
Celssno and the Harpies — may reproduce themselves in 
the brain of superstition — but they were there before. 
They are transcripts, types — the archetypes are in us, 
and eternal. How else should the recital of that, which 
we know in a waking sense to be false, come to affect us 

at all ? or 

— " Names, whose sense we see not, 

Fray us with things that be not ? " 



WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS. HI 

Is it that we naturally conceive terror from such objects, 
considered in their capacity of being able to inflict upon 
us bodily injury? Oh, least of all! These terrors, are 
of older standing. They date beyond body, or, without 
the body, they would have been the same. All the cruel, 
tormenting, defined devils in Dante, tearing, mangling, 
choking, stifling, scorching demons— are they one-half 
so fearful to the spirit of a man, as the simple idea of a 
spirit unembodied following him — 

" Like one that on a lonesome road 
Doth walk in fear and dread, 
And having once turned round, walks on 
And turns no more his head ; 
Because he knows a frightful fiend 
Doth close behind him tread." * 

That the kind of fear here treated of is purely spirit- 
ual — that it is strong in proportion as it is objectless upon 
earth— that it predominates in the period of sinless in- 
fancy — are difficulties, the solution of which might afford 
some probable insight into our antemundane condition, 
and a peep at least into the shadow-land of preexistence. 

My night-fancies have long ceased to be afflictive. I 
confess an occasional nightmare; but I do not, as in 
early youth, keep a stud of them. Fiendish faces, with 
the extinguished taper, will come and look at me ; but I 
know them for mockeries, even while I cannot elude 
their presence, and I fight and grapple with them. For 
the credit of my imagination, I am almost ashamed to 
say how tame and prosaic my dreams are grown. They 
are never romantic, seldom even rural. They are of ar- 
chitecture and of buildings— cities abroad, which I have 

* Mr. Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, 



11^ THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

never seen and har(?Iy have hoped to see. I have trav- 
ersed, for the seeming length of a natural day, Eome, 
Amsterdam, Paris, Lisbon — their churches, palaces, 
squares, market-places, shops, suburbs, ruins, with an 
Inexpressible ser^se of delight — a map-like distinctness 
of trace — and a davliglit vividness of vision, that was all 
but being awake. I have formerly traveled among the 
Westmoreland fells — my highest Alps — but they are ob- 
jects too mighty for the grasp of my dreaming recogni- 
tion; and I have again and again awoke with ineffectual 
struggles of the inner eye, to make out a shape, in any 
way whatever, of Helvellyn. Methought I was in that 
country, but the mountains were gone. The poverty of 
my dreams mortifies me. There is Coleridge, at his will 
can conjure up icy domes, and pleasure-houses for Kubla 
Khan, and Abyssinian maids, and songs of Abara, and 
caverns — 

" Where Alph, the sacred river, runs " — 

to solace his night solitudes — when I cannot muster a 
fiddle. Barry Cornwall has his tritons and his nereids 
gamboling before him in nocturnal visions, and proclaim- 
ing sons born to Neptune — when my stretch of imagina- 
tive activity can hardly, in the night-season, raise up the 
ghost of a fish-wife. To set my failures in somewhat a 
mortifying light — it was after reading the noble Dream 
of this poet, that my fancy ran strong upon these marine 
spectra; and the poor plastic power, such as it is, within 
me set to work, to humor my folly in a sort of dream 
that very night. Methought I was upon the ocean-bil- 
lows at some sea-nuptials, riding and mounted high, with 
the customary train sounding their conchs before me (I 
myself, you may be sure, the leading god)^ and jollily w© 



MY RELATIONS. 113 

went careering over the main, till Just where Ino Leuco- 
thea should have greeted me (I think it was Ino) with a 
white embrace, the billows gradually subsiding, fell from 
a sea-roughness to a sea-calm, and thence to a river-mo- 
tion, and that river (as happens in the familiarization of 
dreams) was no other than the gentle Thames, whicln 
landed me in the wafture of a placid wave or two, alone, 
safe and inglorious, somewhere at the foot of Lambeth 
Palace. 

The degree of the souPs creativeness in sleep might 
furnish no whimsical criterion of the quantum of poeti- 
cal faculty resident in the same soul waking. An old 
gentleman, a friend of mine, and a humorist, used to 
carry this notion so far that, when he saw any stripling 
of his acquaintance ambitious of becoming a poet, his 
first question would be, "Young man, what sort of 
dreams have you?" I have so much faith in my old 
friend's theory that, when I feel that idle vein returning 
upon me, I presently subside into my proper element of 
prose, remembering those eluding nereids, and that in- 
auspicious inland landing. 



MY EELATIONS. 

I AM arrived at that point of life at which a man may 
account it a blessing, as it is a singularity, if he have 
either of his parents surviving. I have not that felicity 
— and sometimes think feelingly of a passage in Browne's 
Christian Morals, where he speaks of a man that hath 
lived sixty or seventy years in the world. "In such a 
compass of time," he says, "a man may have a close ap- 

8 



114 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

prehension what it is to be forgotten, when he hath lived 
.o h'Aii iione u iio coaid remember his father, or scarcely 
the friends of his youth, and may sensibly see with what 
a face in no long time Obliyios^ will look r.pon himself." 
I had an aunt, a dear and good one. She was one 
whom single blessedness had soured to the world. She 
often used to say that I was the only thing in it which 
she loved; and, when she thought I was quitting it, she 
grieved over me witli mother's tears. A partiality quite 
so exclusive my reason cannot altogether approve. She 
was from morning till night poring over good books, and 
devotional exercises. Her favorite volumes were Thomas 
a Kempis, in Stanhope's translation ; and a Roman Cath- 
olic Prayer Book, with the matins and complines regular- 
ly set down — terms which I was that time too young to 
understand. She persisted in reading them, although 
admonished daily concerning their Papistical tendency ; 
and went to church every Sabbath as a good Protestant 
should do. These were the only books she studied ; 
though I think, at one period of her life, she told me, she 
had read with great satisfaction the Adventures of an 
Unfortunate Young Xobleman. Einding the door of the 
chapel in Essex Street open one day — it was in the infan- 
cy or that heresy — she went in, liked the sermon, and the 
manner of worship, and frequented it at intervals for 
some time after. She came not for doctrinal points, and 
never missed them. "With some little asperities in her 
constitution, which I have above hinted at, she was a 
steadfast, friendly being, and a fine old Christian. She 
was a woman of strong sense, and a shrewd mind — ex- 
traordinary at arepartie; one of the few occasions of 
her tireaking silence — else she did not much value wit. 
The only secular employment I remember to have seen 



MY RELATIONa ll5 

her engaged in, was, the splitting of French beans, and 
dropping them into a china basin of fair water. The 
odor of those tender vegetables to this day comes back 
npon my senses, redolent of soothing recollections. Cer- 
tainly it is the most delicate of culinary operations. 

Male aunts, as somebody calls them, I had none — to 
remember. By the uncle's side I may be said to have 
been born an orphan. Brother, or sister, I never had 
any — to know them. A sister, I think, that should have 
been Elizabeth, died in both our infancies. What a com- 
fort, or what a care, may I not have missed in her ? — But 
I have cousins sprinkled about in Hertfordshire — besidfe? 
two, with whom I have been all my life in habits of the 
closest intimacy, and whom I may term cousins par ex- 
cellence. These are James and Bridget Elia. Thej are 
older than myself by twelve, and ten, years ; and neither 
of them seems disposed, in matters of advice and guid- 
ance, to waive any of the prerogatives which primogeni- 
ture confers. May they continue still in the same mind ; 
and when they shall be seventy-five, and seventy-three, 
years old (I cannot spare them sooner), persist in treat- 
ing me in my grand climacteric precisely as a stripling 
or younger brother ! 

James is an inexplicable cousin. Kature hath her 
unities, which not every critic can penetrate ; or, if we 
feel, we cannot explain them. The pen of Yorick, and 
of none since his, could have drawn J. E. entire — those 
fine Shandean lights and shades, which make up his story. 
I must limp after in my poor antithetical manner, as the 
fates have given me grace and talent. J. E. then — to the 
eye of a common observer at least — seemeth made up of 
contradictory principles. The genuine child of impulse, 
the frigid philosopher of prudence — the phlegm of my 



116 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA, 

cousin's doctrine is invariably at war with his tempera- 
ment, which is high sanguine. With always some fire- 
new project in his brain, J. E. is the systematic opponent 
of innovation, and crier down of everything that has not 
stood the test of age and experiment. With a hundred 
fine notions chasing one another hourly in his fancy, he 
is startled at the least approach to the romantic in others ; 
and, determined by his own sense in everything, com- 
mends you to the guidance of common-sense on all occa- 
sioDs. — With a touch of the eccentric in all which he 
does, or says, he is only anxious that you should not com- 
mit yourself by doing anything absurd or singular. On 
my once letting slip at the table, that I was not fond of 
a certain popular dish, he begged me at any rate not to 
say so — for the world would think me mad. He disguises 
a passionate fondness for works of high art (whereof he 
hath amassed a choice collection), under the pretext of 
buying only to sell again — that his enthusiasm may give 
no encouragement to yours. Yet, if it were so, why does 
that piece of tender, pastoral Domenichino hang still by 
his wall? — is the ball of his sight much more dear to 
him ? — or what picture-dealer can talk like him ? 

Whereas mankind, in general, are observed to warp 
their speculative conclusions to the bent of their individ- 
ual humors, Ms theories are sure to be in diametrical op- 
piDsition to his constitution. He is courageous as Charles 
of Sweden, upon instinct ; chary of his person upon prin- 
ciple, as a tra-'^'eUng Quaker. — He has been preaching up 
to me, all my hfe, the doctrine of bov/ing to the great — 
the necessity of ^brms, and manner, to a man's getting on 
in the world. Qe himself never aims at either, that I can 
discover — and h'^s a spirit that would stand upright. in 
the presence 0/ 'Ae Cham of Tartary. It is pleasant to 



MY EELATIONa II7 

hear him discourse of patience— extolling it as the ti-ae^t 
wisdom — and to see him during the last seven minutes 
that his diiiDer is getting ready, N'ature never ran up in 
her haste a more restless piece of workmanship than 
\vhen she moulded this impetuous cousin — and Art never 
turned out a more elaborate orator than he can display 
himself to be, upon this favorite topic of the advantages 
of quiet and contentedness in the state, whatever it be, 
chat we are placed in. He is triumphant on this theme, 
when he has jou safe in one of those short stages that 
ply for the western road, in a very obstructing manner, 
at the foot of John Murray's Street — where you get in 
when it is empty, and are expected to wait till the vehi- 
cle hath completed her just freight— a trying three-quar- 
ters of an hour to some people. He wonders at your 
fidgetiness—" where could we be better than we are, thus 
sitting, thm consulting f "— " prefers, for his part, a state 
of rest to locomotion" — with an eye all the while upon 
the coachman — till at length, waxing out of all patience, 
at your want of it, he breaks out into a pathetic remon- 
strance at the fellow for detaining us so long over the 
time which he had professed, and declares peremptorily, 
that "the gentleman in the coach is determined to get 
out, if lie does not drive on that instant." 

Very quick at inventing an argument, or detecting a 
sophistry, he is incapable of attending you in any chain 
of arguing. Indeed, he makes wild work with logic : and 
seams to jump at most admirable conclusions by some pro- 
cess, not at all akin to it. Consonantly enough to this, 
he hath been heard to deny, upon certain occasions, that 
there exists such a faculty at all in man as reason; and 
wondoreth how man came first to have a conceit of it-^ 
enforcing his negation with ail the might of reasoning he 



118 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

is master of. He has some speculative notions against 
laughter, and will maintain that laughing is not natural 
to Jdm — when peradventure the next moment his lungs 
shall crow like Chanticleer. He says some of the best 
things in the world — and declareth that wit is his aver- 
sion. It was he who said, upon seeing the Eton hoys at 
play in their grounds — What a pity to tkinlc that tJiese 
fine ingenuous lads in a few years will all de cJiafiged into 
frivolous Meiiibers of Parliament ! 

His youth was fiery, glowing, tempestuous — and in 
age he disco vereth no symptom of cooling. This is that 
which I admire in him. I hate people who meet Time 
half-way. I am for no compromise with that inevitable 
spoiler. While he lives, J. E. will take his swing. It 
does me good, as I walk toward the street of my daily av- 
ocation, on some fine May morning, to meet him march- 
ing in a quite opposite direction, with a Jolly, handsome 
presence, and shining, sanguine face, that indicates some 
purchase in his eye — a Claude — or a Hobbima — for much 
of his enviable leisure is consumed at Christie's and Phil- 
lips's — or where not, to pick up pictures, and such gauda. 
On these occasions he mostly stopped me, to read a short 
lecture on the advantage a person like me possesses above 
himself, in having his time occupied with business which 
he must do — assureth me that he often feels it hang heavy 
on his hands — wishes he had fewer holidays — and goes 
off — Westward Ho ! — chanting a tune, to Pull Mall — per- 
fectly convinced that he has convinced me — while I pro- 
ceed in my opposite direction tuneless. 

It is pleasant again to see this Professor of Indiffer- 
ence doing the honors of his new purchase, when he 
has fairly housed it. You must view it in every light, 
till he has found the best — placing it at this distance, and 



MY RELATIONS. HQ 

at that, but always suiting tho focus of your sight to his 
own. You must spy at it through your fingers, to catch 
the aerial perspective — though you assure him that to 
you the hiudscape shows much more agreeable without 
that artifice. Woe be to the luckless wight, who does 
not only not respond to his rapture, but who should drop 
an unseasonable intimation of preferring one of his an- 
terior bargains to the present! — The last is always his 
best hit — his " Cynthia of the minute." — Alas ! how 
many a mild Madonna have I known to come in — a Ra- 
phael ! — keep its ascendency for a few brief moons— then, 
after certain intermedial degradations, from the front 
drawing-room to the back gallery, thence to the dark 
parlor — adopted in turn by each of the Carracci, under 
successive lowering ascriptions of filiation, mildly break- 
ing its fall — consigned to the oblivious lumber-room, go 
out at last a Lucca Giordano, or plain Carlo Maratti!— - 
which things when I beheld— musing upon the chances 
and mutabilities of fate below, hath made me to reflect 
upon the altered condition of great personages, or that 
wofal Queen of Richard IL — 

" — set forth in pomp, 
She came adorned hither like sweet May, 
Sent back like Hallowmas, or short'st of day." 
With great love for you J. E. hath but a limited sympa- 
thy with what you feel or do. He lives in a world of 
his own, and makes slender guesses at what passes in 
your mind. He never pierces the marrow of your 
habits. He will tell an old-established play-goer that 
Mr. Sufih-a-one, of So-and-so (naming one of the thea- 
tres), is a very lively comedian — a'^ a piece of news? 
He advertised me but the other day of some pleas- 
ant green lanes which he had found out for me, 



120 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

Tcnowing me to he a great walker^ in ray own immediate 
vicinity, who have haunted the identical spot any time 
these twenty years ! He has not much respect for that 
class of feelings which goes by the name of sentimental. 
He applies the definition of real evil to bodily suflferings 
exclusively, and rejecteth all others as imaginary. He 
is affected by the sight or the bare supposition of a 
creature in pain to a degree which I have never wit- 
nessed out of womankindo A constitutional acuteness 
to this class of sufferings may in part account for this. 
The animal tribe in particular he taketh under his espe- 
cial protection. A broken-winded or spur-galled horse 
is sure to find an advocate in him. An overloaded ass 
is his client forever. He is the apostle to the brute kind 
— the never-failing friend of those who have none to 
care for them. The contemplation of a lobster boiled or 
eels skinned alim will wring him so that "all for pity he 
could die." It will take the savor from his palate and the 
rest from his pillow for days and nights. With the in- 
tense feeling of Thomas Clarkson, he wanted only the 
steadiness of pursuit and unity of purpose of that " true 
yoke-fellow with Time " to have effected as much for 
the Animal as lie hath done for the Negro Creation. 
But my uncontrollable cousin is but imperfectly formed 
for purposes which demand cooperation. He cannot 
wait. His am-elioration-plans must be ripened in a day„ 
For this reason he has cut but an equivocal figure in 
benevolent societies and combinations for the alleviation 
of human sufferings. His zeal constantly makes him to 
outrun and put out his coadjutors. Yiq thinks of reliev- 
ing, while they think of debatina:. He was blackballed 

out of a society for the Relief of because the fervor 

of his humanity toiled beyond the formal apprehension 



MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. 121 

and creeping processes of his associates. I shall always 
consider this distinction as a patent of nobility in the 
Elia family ! 

Do I mention thess seeming inconsistencies to smile 
at or upbraid my unique cousin? Marry, heaven, and 
all good manners, and the understanding that should be 
between kinsfolk, forbid ! With all the strangenesses of 
this strangest of the Elias^ I would not have him ia one 
jot or tittle other than he is; neither would I barter or 
exchange my wild kinsman for the most exact, regular, 
and every way consistent kinsman breathing. 

In my next, reader, I may perhaps give you some ac- 
count of my cousin Bridget — if you are not already sur- 
feited with cousins — and take you by the hand, if you 
are willing to go with us, on an excursion which wo 
made a summer or two since, in search of more cousins — ' 

" Through the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire." 



MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. 

Beidget Elia has been my housekeeper for many a 
long year. I have obligations fo Bridget extending be- 
yond the period of memory. \We house together, old 
' bachelor and maid, in a sort of^ double singleness^with 
such tolerable comfort, upon the whole7fKat I, iror one, 
find in myself no sort of disposition to go out upon the 
mountains, with the rash king's offspring, to bewail my 
celibacy. We agree pretty well in pur tastes and habits 
—yet so, as " with a difference." / We are generally in 
harmony, with occasional bickerings — as it shouldbe 
among near relations. }Our sympathies are rather un- 



132 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

derstood than expressed; and once, upon my dissem- 
bling a tone in my voice more kind than ordinary, my 
cousin burst into tears, and complained that I was al- 
tered. We are both great readers in different directions. 
While I am hanging over (for the thousandth time) some 
passage in old Burton, or one of his strange contempo- 
raries, she is abstracted in some modern tale or advent- 
ure, whereof our common reading-table is daily fed with 
assiduously fresh supplies. Narrative teases me. I 
have little concern in the progress of events. She must 
have a story— well, ill, or indifferently told, so there be 
life stirring in it, and plenty of good or evil accidents. 
The fluctuations of fortune in fiction, and almost in real 
life, have ceased to interest, or operate but dully upon 
me. Out-of-the-way humors and opinions — heads with 
some diverting twist in them — the oddities of authorship 
please me most. My cousin has a native disrelish of 
anything that sounds odd or 'bizarre. Nothing goes 
down with her that is quaint, irregular, or out of the 
road of common sympathy. She " holds Nature more 
clever." I can pardon her blindness to the beautiful 
obliquities of the Eeligio Medici; but she must apolo- 
gize to me for certain disrespectful insinuations which 
ahe has been pleased to throw out latterly touching the 
intellectuals of a dear favorite of mine, of the last cen- 
tury but one — the thrice noble, chaste, and virtuous, 
but again somewhat fantastical, and original-brained, 
generous Margaret Newcastle. 

It has been the lot of my cousin, oftener perhaps 
than I could have wished, to have had for her associates 
and mine freethinkers — leaders and disciples of novel 
philosophies and systems; but she neither wrangles with 
nor accepts their opinions. That which was good and 



MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE, 1^8 

venerable to her when a child retains its authority over 
her mind still. She never juggles or plays tricks with 
her understanding. 

We are both of us inclined to be a little too positive, 
and I have observed the result of our disputes to be almost 
uniformly this — that in matters of fact, dates, and cir- 
cumstances, it turns out that I was in the right, and my 
cousin in the wrong. But where we have differed upon 
moral points ; upon something proper to be done or let 
alone; whatever heat of opposition or steadiness of con- 
viction 1 set out with, I am sure always, in the long-run^ 
to be brought over to her way of thinking. 

I must touch upon the foibles of my kinswoman with 
a gentle hand, for Bridget does not like to be told of her 
faults. She hath an awkward trick (to say no worse of 
it) of reading in company ; at which times she will an- 
swer yes or no to a question, without fully understanding 
its purport — which is provoking, and derogatory in the 
highest degree to the dignity of the putter of the said 
question. Her presence of mind is equal to the most 
pressing trials of life, but will sometimes desert her upon 
trifling occasions. When the purpose requires it, and is 
a thing of moment, she can speak to it greatly; but in 
matters which are not stuff of the conscience, she hath 
been known sometimes to let slip a word less seasonably. 

Her education in youth was not much attended to ; 
and she happily missed all that train of female garniture, 
which passeth by the name of accomplishments. She 
was tumbled early, by accident or design, into a spacious 
closet of good old English reading, without much selec- 
tion or prohibition, and browsed at will upon that fair 
and wholesome pasturage. Had I twenty girls, they 
should be brought up exactly in this fashion. I know 



124 THE ESSAYS OF ELTA. 

not whether their chance in wedlock might not be di- 
minished by it ; but I can answer for it, that it makes 
(if the worst comes to the worst) most incomparable old 
maids. 

In a season of distress, she is the truest comforter ; 
but in the teasing accidents, and minor perplexities, 
which do not call out the will to meet them, slie some- 
times raaketh matters worse by an excess of participa- 
tion. If she does not always divide your trouble, upon 
the pleasanter occasions of life she is sure always to 
treble your satisfaction. She is excellent to be at a play 
with, or upon a visit; but best, when she goes a journey 
with you. 

We made an excursion together a few summei-s since, 
into Hertfordshire, to beat up the quarters of some of 
our less-known relations in that fine corn-country. 

The oldest thing I remember is Mackery End ; or 
Mackarel End, as it is spelt, perhaps more properly, in 
some old maps of Hertfordshire; a farmhouse — delight- 
fully situated within a gentle walk from Wlieath amp- 
stead. I can just remember having been there, on a 
yisit to a great-aunt, when I was a child, under the care 
of Bridget ; who, as I have said, is older than myself by 
some ten years. I wish that I could throw into a heap the 
remainder of our joint existences ; that we might share 
them in equal division. But that is impossible. TJie 
house was at that time in the occupation of a substantial 
yeoman, who had married my grandmother's sister. His 
name was Gladman. My grandmother was a Bruton, 
married to a Field. The Gladmans and the Brutons are 
still flourishing in that part of tlie country, but the Fields 
are almost extinct. More ttian forty years had elapsed 
since the visit I speak of; and, for the greater portion of 



MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. 125 

that period, we had lost sight of the other two hranches 
also. Who or what sort of persons inherited Mackerj 
End — kindred or strange folk — we were afraid almost to 
conjecture, but determined some day to explore. 

Bj somewhat a circuitous route, taking the noble 
park at Luton in our way from Saint Albans, we arrived 
at the spot of our anxious curiosity about noon. The 
sight of the old farmhouse, though every trace of it was 
effaced from my recollection, affected me with a pleasure 
which I had not experienced for many a year. For 
though I had forgotten it, we had never forgotten being 
there together, and we had been talking about Mackery 
End all our lives, till memory on my part became mocked 
with a phantom of itself, and I thought I knew the aspect 
of a place which, when present, O how unlike it was to 
that which I had conjured up so many times instead 
of it! 

Still the air breathed balmily about it ; the season 
was in the " heart of June," and I could say with the 

poet — 

" But thou, that didst appear so fair 
To fond imagination, 
Dost rival in the light of day 
Her delicate creation ! " 

Bridget's was more a waking bliss than mine, for she 
easily remembered her old acquaintance again — som« 
altered features, of course, a little grudged at. At first, 
indeed, she was ready to disbelieve for joy ; but the 
scene soon reconfirmed itself in her affections — and she 
fj^aversed every outpost of the old mansi&n, to the wood- 
bouse, the orchard, the place where the pigeon-house 
bad stood (house and birds had alike flown) — with a 
breathless impatience of recognition, which was more 



126 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

pardonable perhaps than decorous at the age of fifty-odd. 
But Bridget in some things is behind her years. 

The only thing left was to get into the house — and 
that was a difiiculty which to me singly would have 
been insurmountable ; for I am terribly shy in making 
myself known to strangers and out-of-date kinsfolk. 
Love, stronger than scruple, winged my cousin in with- 
eut me ; but she soon returned with a creature that 
might have sat to a sculptor for the image of Welcome. 
It was the youngest of the Gladmans; who, by marriage 
with a Bruton, had become mistress of the old mansion. 
A comely brood are the Brutons. Six of them, females, 
were noted as the handsomest young women in the 
county. But this adopted Bruton, in my mind, was bet- 
ter than they all — more comely. She was born too late 
to have remembered me. She just recollected in early 
life to have had her cousin Bridget once pointed out to 
her, climbing a stile. But the name of kindred, and of 
cousinship, was enough. Those slender ties, that prove 
slight as gossamer in the rending atmosphere of a me- 
tropolis, bind faster, as we found it, in hearty, homely, 
loving Hertfordshire. In live minutes we were as thor- 
oughly acquainted as if we had been born and bred up 
together ; were familiar, even to the calling each other 
by our Christian names. So Christians should call one 
another. To have seen Bridget, and her — it was like the 
meeting of the two scriptural cousins ! There was a 
grace and dignity, an amplitude of form and stature, an- 
swering to her mind, in this farm.er's wife, which would 
have shined in a palace — or so we thought it. We were 
made welcome by husband and wife equally — we, and 
our friend that was with us. I had almost forgotten him 
—but B. F. will D''^ so soon forget that meeting, if per- 



MODERN GALLANTRY. 1^7 

adventure he shall read this on the far-distant shores 
where the kangaroo liaunts. The fatted calf was made 
ready, or rather was already so, as if in anticipation of 
our coming ; and, after an appropriate glass of native 
wine, never let me forget with whaC honest pride this 
hospitable cousin made us proceed to Wheathampstead, 
to introduce us (as some new-found rarity) to her mother 
and sister Gladmans, who did indeed know something 
more of us, at a time when she almost knew nothing. 
With what corresponding kindness we were received by 
them also — how Bridget's memory, exalted by the occa- 
sion, warmed into a thousand half-obliterated recollec- 
tions of things and persons to my utter astonishment, 
and her own — and to the astoundment of B. F.,'who sat 
by, almost the only thing that was not a cousin there — 
old effaced images of more than half -forgotten names and 
circumstances still crowding back upon her, as words 
written in lemon come out upon exposure to a friendly 
warmth — when I forget all this, then may my country 
cousins forget me ; and Bridget no more remember, that 
'1 the days of weakling infancy I was her tender charge 
— as I have been her care in foolish manhood since — in 
those pretty pastoral walks, long ago, about Mackery 
End, in Hertfordshire. 



MODERN" GALLANTRY. 

In comparing modern with ancient manners, we are 
pleased to compliment ourselves upon the point of gal- 
lantry ; a certain obsequiousness, or deferential respect, 
which we are supposed to pay to females, as females. 

I shall believe that this principle actuates our con- 



128 THE ESSAYS OF ELTA. 

duct, when I can forget that, in the nineteenth centni-j 
of the era from which we date our civility, we are but 
just beginning to leave off the very frequent practice of 
^whipping females in publit, in common with the coarsest 
male offenders. 

I shall believe it to be influential, when I can shut 
my eyes to the fact that in England women are still oc- 
> casionally — hanged. 

I shall believe in it, when actresses are no longer 
subject to be hissed off a stage by gentlemen. 

I shall believe in it, when Dorimant hands a fish-wife 
across the kennel ; or assists the apple-woman to pick up 
her wandering fruit, which some unlucky dray has just 
dissipated. 

I shall believe in it, when the Doriraants in humbler 
life, who would be thought in their way notable adepts 
in this refinement, shall act upon it in places where they 
^are not known, or think themselves not observed — when 
I shall see the traveler for some rich tradesman part with 
his admired box-coat, to spread it over the defenseless 
shoulders of the poor woman, who is passing to her 
parish on the roof of the same stage-coach with him, 
drenched in the rain — when I shall no longer see a 
woman standing up in the pit of a London theatre, till 
she is sick and faint with the exertion, with men about 
her, seated at their ease, and jeering at her distress; till 
one, that seems to have more manners or conscience 
than the rest, significantly declares "she should be wel- 
come to his seat, if she were a little younger and hand- 
somer." Place this dapper warehouseman, or that rider, 
in a circle of their own female acquaintance, and you 
shall confess you have not seen a politer-bred man in 
Lothbury. 



MODERN GALLANTRY. 129 

I 

Lastly, I shall begin to believe that there is some j 

such principle influencing our conduct, when more than ' 

one-half of the drudgery and coarse servitude of the ^ 

world shall cease to be performed by women. 

Until that day comes, I shall never believe this 
boasted point to be anything more than a conventional 
fiction; a pageant got up between the sexes, in a certain 
rank, and at a certain time of life, in which both find 
their account equally. / 

I shall be even disposed to rank it among the salu- \ 
tary fictions of life, when in polite circles I shall see the 
same attentions paid to age as to youth, to homely feat- 
ures as to handsome, to coarse complexions as to clear 
— ^to the woman, as she is a woman, not as she is a 
beauty, a fortune, or a title. 

I shall believe it to be something more than a name, 
when a well-dressed gentleman in a well-dressed com- 
pany can advert to the topic of female old age without 
exciting, and intending to excite, a sneer — when the 
phrases " antiquated virginity," and such a one has 
" overstood her market," pronounced in good company, 
shall raise immediate offense in man, or woman, that 
shall hear them spoken. 

Joseph Paice, of Bread Street Hill, merchant, and 
one of the Directors of the South-Sea Company— the 
same to whom Edwards, the Shakespeare commentator, 
uas addressed a fine sonnet— was the only pattern of 
consistent gallantry I have met with. He took me 
tmder his shelter at an early age, and bestowed some 
^ains upon me. I owe to his precepts and example 
<vhatever there is of the man of business (and that is 
not much) in my composition. It was not his fault that 
1 did not profit more. Though bred a Presbyterian, and 



130 



THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 



brought up a mercliant, he was the finest gentleman of 
his time. He had not one system of attention to females 
in the drawing room, and another in the shop, or at the 
stall. I do not mean that he made no distinction. But 
he never lost sight of sex, or overlooked it in the casu- 
alties of a disadvantageous situation. I have seen him 
stand bareheaded — smile if you please — to a poor 
servant-girl, while she has been inquiring of him the 
way to some street — in such a posture of unforced civil- 
ity, as neither to embarrass her in the acceptance, nor 
himself in the offer, of it. He was no dangler, in the 
common acceptation of the word, after women ; but he 
reverenced and upheld, in every form in which it came 
before him, womanhood. I have seen him — nay, smile 
not — tenderly escorting a market-woman, whom he had 
encountered in a shower, exalting his umbrella over her 
poor basket of fruit, that it miglit receive no damage, 
with as much carefulness as if she had been a countess. 
To the reverend form of Female Eld he would yield the 
wall (though it were to an ancient beggar woman) with 
more ceremony than we can afford to show our gran- 
dams. He was the Preux Chevalier of Age; the Sir 
Calidore, or Sir Tristan, to those who have no Calidores 
or Tristans to defend them. The roses, that had long 
faded thence, still bloomed for him in those withered 
and yellow cheeks. 

He was never married, but in his youth he paid his 
addresses to the beautiful Susan Winstanley — old Win- 
Stanley's daughter, of Clapton — who, dying in the early 
days of their courtship, confirmed in him the resolution 
of perpetual bachelorship. It was during their short 
courtship, he told me, that he had been one day treating 
his mistress with a profusion of ci^il speeches— the com- 



MODERN GALLANTRY. 131 

mon gallantries — to which kind of thing she had hitherto 
manifested no repugnance — but in this instance with no 
effect. He could not obtain from her a decent acknowl- 
edgment in return. She rather seemed to resent his 
compliments. He could not set it down to caprice, for 
the lady had always sliown herself above that littleness. 
When he ventured on the following day, finding her £ 
little better humored, to expostulate with her on her 
coldness of yesterday, she confessed, with her usual 
frankness, that she had no sort of dislike to his atten- 
tions; that she could even endure some high-flown com- 
pliments ; that a young woman placed in her situation had 
a right to expect all sort of civil things said to her; that 
she hoped she could digest a dose of adulation, short of 
insincerity, with as little injury to her humility as most 
young women; but that — a little before he had com- 
menced his compliments — she had overheard him by 
accident, in rather rough language, rating a young wom- 
an who had not brought home his cravats quite to the 
appointed time, and she thought to herself, "As lam 
Miss Susan Winstanley. and a young lady — a reputed 
beauty, and known to be a fortune — I can have my choice 
of the finest speeches from the mouth of this very fine 
gentleman who is courting me— but if I had been poor 
Mary Such-a-one {naming the milliner) — and had failed 
©f bringing home the cravats to the appointed hour — 
though perhaps I had sat up half the night to forward 
them — what sort of compliments should I have received 
then ? — And my woman's pride came to my assistance ; 
and 1 thought that, if it were only done to do me honor, 
a female, like myself, might have received handsomer 
usage ; and I was determined not to accept any fine 
speeches, to the compromise of that sex, the belonging 



133 



THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 



to which was, after all, mj strongest claim and title to 
them." I think the lady discovered both generosity, and 
a just way of thinking, in this rebuke which she gave 
her lover ; and I have sometimes imagined that the un- 
common strain of courtesy, which through life regulated 
the actions and- behavior of my friend toward all of 
womankind indiscriminate!}^, owed its happy origin to 
this seasonable lesson from the lips of his lamented mis- 
tress. 

I wish the whole temale world would entertain the 
same notion of these things that Miss Winstanley showed. 
Then we should see something of the spirit of consistent 
gallantry ; and no longer witness the anomaly of tlie same 
man — a pattern of true politeness to a wife — of cold 
contempt, or rudeness, to a sister — the idolater of his fe- 
male mistress — the disparager and despiser of his no less 
female aunt, or unfortunate — still female — maiden cousin. 
Just so much respect as a woman derogates from her own 
sex, in vrhatever condition placed — her handmaid, or de- 
pendent — she deserves to have diminished from herself 
on that score ; and probably will feel the diminution 
when youth, and beauty, and advantages, not inseparable 
from sex, shall lose of their attraction. "What a woman 
should demand of a man in courtship, or after it, is first — 
respect for her as she is a woman ; and next to that — to 
be respected by him above all other women. But let her 
stand upon her female character as upon a foundation; 
and let the attentions, incident to individual preference, 
be so many pretty additaments and ornaments — as many, 
and as fanciful, as you please — to that main structure. 
Let her first lesson be, with sweet Susan Winstanley — to 
reverence her sex. 



OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 133 

THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 

I WAS born, and passed the first seven years of my 
life, in the Temple. Its church, its halls, its gardens, its 
fountain, its river, I had almost said— for in those young 
years, what was this king of rivers to me but a stream 
that watered our pleasant places ?— these are of my old- 
est recollections. I repeat, to this day, no verses to my- 
self more frequently, or with kindlier emotion, than those 
of Spenser, where he speaks of this spot : 

" There when they came, whereas those bricky towers, 
The which on Themmes brode aged back doth ride, 
Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers, 
There whylome wont the Temple knights to bide, 
Till they decayed through pride." 

Indeed, it is the most elegant spot in the metropolis. 
What a transition for a countryman visiting London for 
the first time— the passing from the crowded Strand or 
Fleet Street, by unexpected avenues, into its magnificent, 
ample squares, its classic green recesses ! What a cheer- 
ful, liberal look hath that portion of it which, from three 
sides, overlooks the greater garden ; that goodly pile 

" Of building strong, albeit of Paper hight," 

confronting with massy contrast, the lighter, older, more 
fantastically shrouded one, named of Harcourt, with the 
cheerful Orown-office Row (place of my kindly engen- 
dure), right opposite the stately stream, which washes 
the garden-foot with her yet scarcely trade-polluted 
waters, and seems but just weaned from her Tvvdckenham 
Naiades! A man would give something to have been 
born in such places. What a collegiate aspect has that 



134 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

fine Elizabethan hall, where the fountain plays, which 1 
have made to rise and fall, how many times! — to the as- 
toundment of the young urchins, my contemporaries, 
who, not being able to guess at its recondite machinery, 
were almost tempted to hail the wondrous work as mag- 
ic ! What an antique air had the now almost effaced sun- 
dials, with their moral inscriptions, seeming coevals with 
that Time which they measured, and to take their reve- 
lations of its flight immediately from heaven, holding 
correspondence with the fountain of light ! How would 
the dark line steal imperceptibly on, watched by the 
eye of childhood, eager to detect its movement, never 
catched, nice as an evanescent cloud, or the first arresta 
of sleep ! 

" Ah ! yet doth beauty like a dial-hand 
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived ! " 

"What a dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous em- 
bowelments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn dull- 
ness of communication, compared with the simple altar- 
like structure and silent heart-language of the old dial ! 
It stood as the garden-god of Christian gardens. Why 
is it almost everywhere vanished? Tf its business use 
be superseded by more elaborate inventions, its moral 
uses, its beauty, might have pleaded for its continuance. 
It spoke of moderate labors, of pleasures not protracted 
after sunset, of temperance and good hours. It was the 
primitive clock, the horologe of the first world. Adam 
could scarce have missed it in Paradise. It was the 
measure appropriate for sweet plants and flowers to 
spring by, for the birds to apportion their silver war- 
blings by, for flocks to pasture and be led to fold by. 
The shepherd " carved it out quaintly in the sun ; " and, 



OLD BEXCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. I35 

turning philosopher bj the very occupation, provided it 
with mottoes more touching than tombstones. It was a 
pretty device of the gardener, recorded by Marvell, who, 
in the days of artificial gardening, made a dial out of 
herbs and flowers. I must quote his verses a little 
higher up, for they are full, as all his serious poetry 
was, of a witty delicacy. They will not come in awk- 
wardly, I hope, in a talk of fountains and sundials. He 
is speaking of sweet garden-scenes : 

" What wondrous life is this I lead ? 
Eipe apples drop about my head. 
The luscious clusters of the vine 
Upon my mouth do crush their wine. 
The nectarine, and curious peach, 
Into my hands themselves do reach. 
Stumbling on melons as I pass, 
Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass. 
Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less 
Withdraws into its happiness. 
The mind, that ocean, where each kind 
Does straight its own resemblance find ; 
Yet it creates, transcending these, 
Far other worlds and other seas ; 
Anniliilating all that's made 
To a green thought in a green shade. 
Here at the fountain's sliding foot, 
Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root, 
Casting the body's vest aside. 
My soul into the boughs does glide ;- 
There like a bird it sits and sings, 
Then whets and claps Its silver wings, 
And, till prepared for longer flight, 
Waves in its plumes the various light. 



136 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

How well the skillful gardener drew, 
Of flowers and herbs, this dial new I 
Where from above the milder sun 
Does through a fragrant zodiac run ; 
And, as it works, the industrious bee 
Computes its time as well as we. 
How could such sweet and wholesome hours 
Be reckoned but with herbs and flowers ? " * 

The artificial fountains of the metropolis are, in like 
manner, fast yanishing. Most of them are dried up or 
bricked over. Yet, where one is left, as in that little 
green nook behind the South-Sea House, what a fresh- 
ness it gives to the drear j pile ! Four little winged 
marble boys used to play their virgin fancies, spouting 
out ever-fresh streams from their innocent wanton lips, 
in the square of Lincoln's Inn, when I was no bigger 
than they were figured. They are gone, and the spring 
choked up. The fashion, they tell me, is gone by, and 
these things are esteemed childish. Why not, then, grat- 
ify children by letting them stand ? Lawyers, I suppose, 
were children once. They are awakening images to them 
at least. Why must everything smack of man and man- 
nish ? Is the world all grown up ? Is childhood dead ? 
Or is there not in the bosoms of the wisest and the best 
some of the child's heart left, to respond to its earliest 
enchantments ? The figures were grotesque. Are the 
stifl?-wigged living figures, that still flitter and chatter 
about that area, less Gothic in appearance ? Or is the 
splutter of their hot rhetoric one half so refreshing and 
innocent as the little cool, playful streams those exploded 
cherubs uttered ? 

* From a copy of verses entitled " The Garden.'* 



OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 13 7 

They have lately gothicized the entrance to the Inner 
Temple Hall, and the library front ; to assimilate them, 
I suppose, to the body of the hall, which they do not at 
all resemble. What is become of the winged horse that 
stood over the former ? a stately arms ! And who has 
removed those frescoes of the Virtues, which Italianized 
the end of the Paper-buildings ? — my first hint of alle- 
gory ! They must account to me for these things, which 
I miss so greatly. 

The terrace is, indeed, left, which we used to call the 
parade ; but the traces are passed away of the footsteps 
which made its pavement awful ! It is become common 
and profane. The old benchers had it almost sacred to 
themselves, in the fore-part of the day at least. They 
might not be sided or jostled. Their air and dress as- 
serted the parade. You left wide spaces betwixt you 
when you passed them. We walk on even terms with 

their successors. The roguish eye of J ^11, ever ready 

to be delivered of a jest, almost invites a stranger to vie 
a repartee with it. But what insolent familiar durst 
have mated Thomas Coventry ? — whose person was a 
quadrate, his step massy and elephantine, his face square 
as the lion's, his gait peremptory and path-keeping, in- 
divertible from his way as a moving column, the scare- 
crow of his inferiors, the browbeater of equals and su- 
periors, who made a solitude of children wherever he 
came, for they fled his insufferable presence as they 
would have shunned an Elisha bear. His growl was as 
thunder in their ears, whether he spake to them in mirth 
or in rebuke — his invitatory notes being, indeed, of all, 
the most repulsive and horrid. Clouds of snuff, aggravat- 
ing the natural terrors of his speech, broke from each 
majestic nostril, darkening the air. He took it, not by 



138 TOE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

pinches, but a palmfiil at once, diving for it under the 
mighty flaps of his old-fashioned waistcoat-pocket ; hiy 
waistcoat red and angry, his coat dark rappee, tinctured 
by dye original, and by adjuncts, with buttons of obso- 
lete gold. And so he paced the terrace. 

By his side a railder form was sometimes to be seen; 
the pensive gentility of Samuel Salt. They were co 
3vals, and had nothing but that and their benchership in 
common. In politics Salt v/as a Whig, and Coventry a 
stanch Tory. Many a sarcastic growl did the latter 
cast out— for Coventry had a rough, spinous humor — at 
the political confederates of his associate, which re- 
bounded from the gentle bosom of the latter like cannon- 
balls from wool. You could not ruffle Samuel Salt, 

S. had the reputation of being a very clever man, 
and of excellent discernment in the chamber practice of 
the law. I suspect his knowledge did not amount to 
much. When a case of difficult disposition of money, 
testamentary or otherwise, came before him, he ordina- 
rily handed it over with a few instructions to his man 
Level, who was a quick little fellow, and would dispatch 
it out of hand by the light of natural understanding, of 
which he had an uncommon share. It was incredible 
what repute for talents S. enjoyed by the mere trick of 
gravity. He was a shy man ; a child might pose him in 
a minute — indolent and procrastinating to the last de- 
gree. Yet men would give him credit for vast applica- 
tion, in spite of himself. He was not to be trusted with 
himself with impunity. He never dressed for a dinner- 
party but he forgot his sw^ord — they wore swords then — ■ 
or some other necessary part of his equipage. Lovei 
had his eye upon him on all these occasions, and ordina- 
rily gave him his cue. If there was anything which he 



OLD BEKCUERS OTi THE INNER TEMPLE. 139 

could speak unseasonablj, he was sure to do it. He 
was to dine at a relative's of the unfortunate Miss 
Bland J on the day of her execution — and L., who had a 
wary foresight of his prol/able hallucinations, before he 
set out, schooled him witb great anxiety not in any pos-" 
sible manner to allude tv her story that day. S. prona° 
ised faithfully to observe the injunction. He had not 
been seated in the pp,r]or, where the company was ex- 
pecting the dinner - pummons, four minutes, when, a 
pause in the conversation ensuing, he got up, looked out 
of window, and p'jlling down his ruffles — an ordinary 
motion with hira-- observed, "it was a gloomy day," and 
added, "Miss Blandy must be hanged by this time, I 
suppose." Iii'tances of this sort were perpetual. Yet 
S. was thought by some of the greatest men of his time 
a fit perponto be consulted, not alone in matters pertain- 
ing to the law, but in the ordinary niceties and embar- 
rassments of conduct — from force of manner entirely. 
He never laughed. He had the same good fortune 
among the female world — was a known toast with the 
ladies, and one or two are said to have died for love of 
him — I suppose, because he never trifled or talked gal- 
lantry with them, or paid them, indeed, hardly common 
attentions. He had a fine face and person, but wanted, 
meth ought, the spirit that should have shown them off 
with advantage to the women. His eye lacked lustre. 

Not so thought Susan P ; who, at the advanced age 

of sixty, was seen, in the cold evening-time, unaccom- 
panied, wetting the pavement of B d Eow, with tears 

that fell in drops which might be heard, because her 
friend had died that day — he, whom she had pursued 
with a hopeless passion for the last forty years — a pas- 
sion, which years could not extinguish or abate ; nor the 



THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 



long-resolved, yet gently-enforced, puttings oif of unre- 
lenting baclielorhood dissuade from its cherished pur- 
pose. Mild Susan P ^ thou hast now thy friend in 

heaven ! 

Thomas Coventry was a cadet of the noble family of 
that name. He passed his youth in contracted circum- 
stances, which gave him early those parsimonious hahits 
which in after-life never forsook him ; so that, with one 
windfall or another, about the time I knew him he was 
master of four or five hundred thousand pounds ; nor 
did he look, or walk, worth a moidore less. He lived 
tn a gloomy house opposite the pump in Serjeant's Inn, 
^leet Street. J., the counsel, is doing self-imposed pen- 
ance in it, for what reason I divine not, at this day. 0. 
had an agreeable seat at North Cray, where he seldom 
spent above a day or two at a time in the summer ; but 
preferred, during the hot months, standing at his win- 
dow in this damp, close, well-like mansion, to watch, as 
he said, " the maids drawing water all day long." I sus- 
pect he had his within -door reasons for the preference. 
Bic currus et armafuere. He might think his treasures 
aaore safe. His house had the aspect of a strong-box. 
C. was a close hunks — a hoarder rather than a miser — 
or, if a miser, none of the mad Elwes breed, who have 
brought discredit upon a character, which cannot exist 
without certain admirable points of steadiness and unity 
of purpose. One may hate a true miser, but cannot, 1 
suspect, so easily despise him. By taking care of the 
pence, he is often enabled to part with the pounds, upon 
a scale that leaves us careless, generous fellows halting 
at an immeasurable distance behind. C, gave away 
thirty thousand pounds at once in his lifetime to a blind 
eharity. His housekeeping was severely looted after, 



OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 14^ 

but he kept the table of a gentleman. He would kno^ 
who came in and who went out of his house, hut ti»fl 
kitchen- chimney was never suffered to freeze. 

Salt was his opposite in this, as in all — n^ver knew 
what he was worth in the world; and having but a 
competency for his rank, which his indolent habits were 
little calculated to improve, might have suffered severely 
if he had not had honest people about him. Lovel to6k 
care of everything. He was at once his clerk, his good 
servant, his dresser, his friend, his " flapper," his guide, 
stop-watch, auditor, treasurer. He did nothing wiinout 
consulting Lovel, or failed in anything without expect- 
ing and fearing his admonishing. He put himselr almost 
too much in his hands, had they not been the purest in 
the world. He resigned his title almost to respect as a 
master, if L. could ever have forgotten for a monnent 
that he was a servant. 

I knew this Lovel. He was a man of an incorrigible 
and losing honesty. A good fellow withal, ana *•' would 
strike." In the cause of the oppressed he never (Con- 
sidered inequalities, or calculated the number or his op- 
ponents. He once wrested a sword out of tne nand of 
a man of quality that had drawn upon him ; and pom- 
meled him severely with the hilt of it. Tne swordsman 
had offered insult to a female — an occasion upon which 
no. odds against him could have prevented tne interfer- 
ence of Lovel. He would stand next day bareheaded to 
the same person, modestly to excuse his interference — 
for L. never forgot rank, where sometnin^ better was 
not concerned. L. was the liveliest little leilow breath- 
ing, had a face as gay as Garrick's, wnop^ he was said 
greatly to resemble (I have a portrait or mm which con- 
firms it), possessed a fine turn for ijttoiuroiis poetry — next 



142 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

to Swift and Prior — moulded ineads in clay or plaster of 
Paris to admiration, hj the dint of natural genius mere- 
ly; turned cribbage-boards, and such small cabinet toys 
to perfection ; took a hand at quadrille or bowls with 
equal facility; made punch better than any man of his 
degree in England ; had the merriest quips and conceits; 
and was altogether as brimful of rogueries and inventions 
as you could desire. He was a brother of the angle.^ 
moreover, and just such a free, hearty, honest compan- 
ion as Mr. Izaak Walton would have chosen to go a- fish- 
ing with. I saw him in his old age and the decay of his 
faculties, palsy-smitten, in the last sad stage of human 
weakness — " a remnant most forlorn of what he was " — 
yet even then his eye would light up upon the mention 
of his favorite Garrick. He was greatest, he would say, 
in Bayes — " was upon the stage nearly throughout the 
whole performance, and as busy as a bee." At intervals, 
too, he would speak of his former life, and how he came 
up a little boy from Lincoln to go to service, and how his 
mother cried at parting with him, and how he returned, 
after some few years' absence, in his smart, new livery, 
to see her, and she blessed herself at the change, and 
could hardly be brought to believe that it was "her own 
bairn." And then, the excitement subsiding, he would 
weep, till I have wished that sad second-childhood might 
have a mother still to lay its head upon her lap. But the 
common mother of us all in no long time after received 
him gently into hers. 

With Coventry, and with Salt, in their walks upon 
the terrace, most commonly Peter Pierson would join to 
make up a third. They did not walk linked arm-in-arm 
in those days — "as now our stout triumvirs sweep the 
streets" — but generally with both hands folded bebmd 



OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 143 

them for state, or with one at least behind, the other car- 
rying a cane. P. was a benevolent but not a prepossess- 
ing man. He had that in his face which you could not 
term unhappiness ; it rather implied an incapacity of be- 
ing happy. His cheeks were colorless even to whiteness. 
His look was uninviting, resembling (but v/ithout his 
sourness) that of our great philanthropist. I know that 
he did good acts, but I could never make out what he 
teas. Contemporary with these, but subordinate, was 
Daines Barrington — another oddity — he walked burly 
and square — in imitation, I think, of Coventry — howbeit 
lie attained not to the dignity of his prototype. Never- 
theless, he did pretty well, upon the strength of being a 
tolerable antiquarian, and having a brother a bishop. 
When the n.ccount of his year's treasurershlp came to be 
audited, the following singular charge was unanimously 
disallowed by the bench : " Item, disbursed Mr. Allen, the 
gardener, twenty shillings, for stuff to poison the spar- 
rows, by my orders." Next to him was old Barton — a 
jolly negation, who took upon him the ordering of the 
bills of fare for the Parliament chamber, where the bench- 
ers dine — answering to the combination rooms at Col- 
lege — much to the easement of his less epicurean breth- 
ren. I know nothing more of him, — Then Kead, and 
Twopeny — Read, good-humored and personable — Two- 
peny, good-humored, but thin, and fehcitous in jests upon 
his own figure. If T. was thin, Wharry was attenuated 
and fleeting. Many must remember him (for he was 
rather of later date) and his singular gait, which was per- 
formed by three steps and a jump regularly succeeding. 
The steps were little efforts, like th.at of a child begin- 
ning to walk ; the jump comparatively vigorous, as a foot 
to an inch. "Where he learned this figure, or what oo- 



144 THE ESSAYS OF ELTA. 

casioned it, I could never discover. It was neither grace' 
ful in itself, nor seemed to answer the purpose any bet- 
ter than common walking. The extreme tenuity of his 
frame, I suspect, set him upon it. It was a trial of pois- 
ing. Twopeny would often rally him upon his leanness^ 
and hail him as brother Lusty ; but W. had no relist 
of a joke. His features were spiteful. I have heard that 
he would pinch his cat's ears extremely, when anything 
had offended him. Jackson — the omniscient Jackson he 
was called- -was of this period. He had the reputation 
of possessing more multifarious knowledge than any man 
of his time. He was the Friar Bacon of the less literate 
portion of the Temple. I remember a pleasant passage, 
of the cook applying to him, with much formality of 
apology, for instructions how to write down edge lone 
©f beef in his bill of commons. He was supposetl to 
know, if any ma^i in the world did. He decided the or- 
thography to be — as I have given it — fortifying his au- 
thority with such anatomical reasons as dismissed the 
manciple (for t^e time) learned and happy. Some do 
spell it yet, perversely, aitcli bone, from a fanciful resem- 
blance between, its shape and that of the aspirate so de- 
nominated. I Aad almost forgotten Mingay with the iron 
hand — but he ^^as somewhat later. He had lost his right 
hand by somQ -accident, and supplied it with a grappling- 
hook, which 'Ae wielded with a tolerable adroitness. I 
detected the ^'abstitute, before I was old enough to rea- 
son whether it were artificial or not. I remember the 
astonishmeDt it raised in me. He was a blustering, loud- 
talking porson ; and I reconciled the phenomenon to my 
ideas as axi emblem of power — somewhat like the horns 
in the forehead of Michael Angelo's Moses. Baron Ma- 
sere&T ^\q walks (or did till very lately) in the costunae 



OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 145 

of the reign of George II., closes my imperfect recollec- 
tions of the old benchers of the Inner Temple. 

Fantastic forms, whither are ye fled ? Or, if the like 
of you exist, why exist they no more for me ? Ye inex- 
plicable, half -understood appearances, why comes in rea- 
son to tear away the preternatural mist, bright or gloomy, 
that enshrouded you ? Why make ye so sorry a figure 
in my relation, who made up to me — to my childish eyes 
—the mythology of the Temple? In those days I saw 
gods, as " old men covered with a mantle," walking upon 
the earth. Let the dreams of classic idolatry perish — > 
extinct be the fairies and fairy trumpery of legendary 
fabling, in the heart of childhood, there will, forever, 
spring up a well of innocent or wholesome superstition — 
the seeds of exaggeration will be busy there, and vital — ■ 
from e very-day forms educing the unknown and the un- 
common, la that little Goshen there will be light, when 
the grown world flounders about in the darkness of sense 
and materiality. While childhood, and while dreams, re- 
ducing childhood, shall be left, Imagination shall not have 
spread her holy wings totally to fly the earth. 

P. S. — I have done injustice to the soft shade of 
Samuel Salt. See what it is to trust to imperfect mem- 
ory, and the erring notices of childhood ! Yet I protest 
I always thought that he had been a bachelor! This 
gentleman, R. IT. informs me, married young, and losing 
his lady in childbed, within the first year of their union, 
fell into a deep melancholy, from the effects of which, 
probably, he never thoroughly recovered. In what a 
new light does this place his rejection (oh, call it by a 

gentler name!) of mild Susan P , unraveling into 

beauty certain peculiarities of this very shy and retiring 
character I Henceforth let no one receive the narratives 

10 



146 THE ESSAYS OF ELlA. 

of Elia for true records ! They are, in truth, but shadows 
of fact — verisimilitudes, not verities— or sitting but upon 
the remote edges and outskirts of liistory. He is no 
such honest chronicler as R. N., and would have done 
better, perhaps, to have consulted that gentleman, before 
he sent these incondite reminiscences to press. But th© 
worthy sub-treasurer — who respects his old and his new 
masters — would but have been puzzled at the indecorous 
liberties of Elia. The good laan wots not, peradventure, 
of the license which Magazines have arrived at in this 
plain-speaking age, or hardly dreams of their existence 
beyond the GentlemarCs — his furthest monthly excur- 
sions in this nature having been long confined to the holy 
ground of honest Urlaii's obituary. May it be long be- 
fore his own name shall help to swell those columns of 
unenvied flattery ! — Meantime, O ye New Benchers of 
the Inner Temple, cherish him kindly, for he is himself 
the kindliest of human creatures. Should infirmities 
overtake him — he is yet in green and vigorous senility — 
make allowances for them, remembering that " ye your- 
selves are old." So may the Winged Horse, your an- 
cient badge and cognizance, still flourish ! so may future 
Hookers and Seldens illustrate your church and cham- 
bers! so may the sparrows, in default of more melodious 
quiristers, unpoisoned hop about your walks ! so may 
the fresh-colored and cleanly nursery-maid, who, by 
leave, airs her playful charge in your stately gardens, 
drop her prettiest blushing curtsy as ye pass, reductive 
of juvenescent emotion ! so may the younkers of this 
generation eye you, pacing your stately terrace, with the 
same superstitious veneration, with which the child Elia 
gazed ou the Old Worthies that solemnized the parade 
before ye 1 



GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 147 



GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 

The ciistom of saying graoe at meals had, probably, 
it!5 origin in the early times of the world, and the hunter- 
state of man, when dinners were precarious things, and 
a fnll meal was something more than a common blessing! 
when a bellyful was a windfall, and looked like a spe- 
cial providence. In the shouts of triumphant songs with 
which, after a season of sharp abstinence, a lucky booty 
of deer's or goat's flesh would naturally be ushered home, 
existed, perhaps, the germ of the modern grace. It is 
not otherwise easy to be understood, why the blessing of 
food — the act of eating — should have had a particular 
expression of thanksgiving annexed to it, distinct from 
that implied and silent gratitude with which we are ex- 
pected to enter upon the enjoyment of the many other 
various gifts and good things of existence. 

I own that I am disposed to say grace upon twenty 
other occasions in the course of the day besides my din- 
ner. I want a form for setting out upon a pleasant walk, 
for a moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting, or a 
solved problem. Why have we none for books, those 
spiritual repasts — a grace before Milton — a grace before 
Shakespeare — a devotional exercise proper to be said 
before reading the " Fairy Queen ? " — but the received 
ritual having.prescribed these forms to the solitary cere- 
mony of manducation, I shall confine my observations to 
the experience which I have had of the grace, properly 
so called ; commending my new scheme for extension to 
a niche in the grand philosophical, poetical, and per- 
chance in part heretical, liturgy, now compiling by my 
friend Homo Humanus, for the use of a certain snug con- 



118 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

gregation of Utopian Rabelaisian Christians, no matt^ 
where assembled. 

The form, then, of the benediction before eating has 
its beauty at a poor man's table, or at the simple and un- 
provocative repast of children. It is here that the grace 
becomes exceedingly graceful. The indigent man, who 
hardly knows whether he shall have a meal the next day 
or not, sits down to his fare with a present sense of the 
blessing, which can be but feebly acted by the rich, into 
whose mind the conception of wanting a dinner could 
never, but by some extreme theory, have entered. The 
proper end of food — the animal sustenance — is barely 
contemplated by them. The poor man's bread is his 
daily bread, literally his bread for the day. Their courses 
are perennial. 

Again, the plainest diet seems the fittest to be pre- 
ceded by the grace. That which is least stimulative to 
appetite, leaves the mind mos. free for foreign considera- 
tions. A man may feel thankful, heartily thankful, over 
a dish of plain mutton with turnips, and have leisure to 
reflect upon the ordinance and institution of eating; 
when he shall confess a perturbation of mind, incon- 
sistent with the purposes of the grace, at the presence of 
venison or turtle. When I have sate (a rarus Jiospes) at 
rich men's tables, with the savory soup and messes 
steaming up the nostrils, and moistening the lips of the 
guests with desire and a distracted choice, I have felt 
the introduction of that ceremony to be unseasonable. 
With the ravenous orgasm upon you, it seems imper- 
tinent to interpose a religious sentiment. It is a confu- 
sion of purpose to mutter out praises from a mouth that 
waters. The heats of epicurism put out the gentle flame 
of dovotion. The incense which rises round is pa^?aa, 



GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 14& 

and the belly -god intercepts it for Ms own. The very 
excess of the provision beyond the needs, takes away all 
sense of proportion between the end and means. The 
giver is veiled by his gifts. You are startled at the in- 
justice of returning thanks — for what ? — for having too 
much, while so many starve. It is to praise the gods 
amiss. 

I have observed this awkwardness felt, scarce con- 
sciously, perhaps, by the good man who says the grace. 
I have seen it in clergymen and others — a sort of shame 
— a sense of the co-presence of circumstances which un- 
hallow the blessing. After a devotional tone put on for 
a few seconds, how rapidly the speaker will fall into his 
common voice! helping himself or his neighbor, as if to 
get rid of some uneasy sensation of hypocrisy. Not that 
the good man was a hypocrite, or was not most consci- 
entious in the discharge of the duty ; but he felt in his 
inmost mind the incompatibility of the scene and the 
viands before him, with the exercise of a calm and ration- 
al gratitude. 

I hear somebody exclaim — Would you have Chris- 
tians sit down at table, like hogs to their troughs, with- 
out remembering the Giver? — ^no— I would have them 
sit down as Christians, remembering the Giver, and less 
like hogs. Or if their appetites must run riot, and they 
must pamper themselves with delicacies for which East 
and West are ransacked, I would have them postpone 
their benediction to a fitter season, when appetite is laid ; 
when the still, small voice can be heard, and the reason 
of the grace returns — with temperate diet and restricted 
dishes. Gluttony and surfeiting are no proper occasions 
for thanksgiving. When Jeshurun waxed fat, we read 
that he kicked, Yirgil knew the harpy-nature better, 



150 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

when he put into the mouth of Celseno anything but a 
blessing. We may be gratefully sensible of the delicious- 
ness of some kinds of food beyond others, though that is 
a meaner and inferior gratitude : but the proper object 
of the grace is sustenance, not relishes ; daily bread, not 
delicacies ; tlie means of life, and not the means of pam- 
pering the carcass. With what frame or composure, I 
wonder, can a city chaplain pronounce his benediction at 
some great Hall-feast, when he knows that his last con- 
cluding pious word — and that in all probability, the sa- 
cred name which he preaches — is but the signal for so 
many impatient harpies to commence their foul orgies, 
with as little sense of true thankfulness (which is tem- 
periince) as those Yirgilian fowl ! It is well if the good 
man himself does not feel his devotions a little clouded, 
those foggy, sensuous steams mingling with and polluting 
the pure altar- sacrifice. 

The severest satire upon full tables and surfeits is the 
banquet which Satan, in the "Paradise Eegained," pro- 
vides for a temptation in the wilderness : 

" A table richly spread in regal mode 
With dishes piled, and meats of noblest sort 
And savor ; beasts of chase, or f ov/l of game, 
In pastry built, or from the spit, or boiled, 
Gris-amber-steamed ; all fish from sea or shore, 
Freshet or purling brook, for Vt'hich Avas di'ained 
Pontus, and Lucrine bay, and Afric coast." 

The tempter, I warrant you, thought these cates 
would go down without the recommendatory preface of 
a benediction. They are like to be short graces where 
the devil plays the host. — I am afraid the poet Avants his 
usual decorum in this place. Was he thinking of the 



GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 151 

old Roman luxury, or of a gaudj day at Cambridge? 
fills was a temptation fitter for a Heliogabalus. The 
xihole banquet is too civic and culinary, and the accom- 
paniments altogether a profanation of that deep, ab- 
stracted, holy scene. The mighty artillery of sauces, 
which the cook-fiend conjures up, is out of proportion 
to the simple wants and plain hunger of the guest. He 
that disturbed him in his dreams, from his dreams might 
have been taught better. To the temperate fantasies of 
the famished Son of God, what sort of feasts presented 
themselves? — He dreamed, indeed — 

" — As appetite is wont to dream, 
Of meats and drinks, Nature's refreshment sweet." 

But what meats? — 

" Ilim thought, he by the brook of Cherith stood, 
And saw the ravens with their horny beaks 
Food to Elijah bringing even and morn ; 
Though ravenous, taught to abstain from what they brought; 
He saw the prophet also how he fled 
Into the desert and how there he slept 
Under a juniper ; then how awaked 
He found his supper on the coals prepared, 
And by the angel was bid rise and eat, 
And ate the second time after repose. 
The strength whereof sufficed him forty days ; 
Sometimes, that with Elijah he partook. 
Or as a guest with Daniel at his pulse." 

J^^othing in Milton is finelier fancied than these temperate 
dreams of the divine Hungerer. To which of these two 
visionary banquets, think you, would the introduction of 
what is called the grace have been the most fitting and 
pertinent? 



152 THE ESSAYS OF ELTA. 

Theoretically I am no enemy to graces ; but practi- 
cally I own that (before meat especially) they seem to 
involve something awkward and unseasonable. Our ap- 
petites, of one or another kind, are excellent spurs to 
our reason, which might otherwise but feebly set about 
tlie great ends of preserving and continuing the species., 
They are fit blessings to be contemplated at a distance 
with a becoming gratitude ; but the moment of appetite 
(the judicious reader will apprehend me) is, perhaps, the 
least fit season for that exercise. The Quakers, who 
go about their business of every description with more 
calmness than we, have more title to the use of these 
benedictory prefaces. I have alv/ ays admired their silent 
grace, and the more because I have observed their appli- 
cations to the meat and drink following to be less pas- 
siojiate and sensual than ours. They are neither gluttons 
nor wine-bibbers as a people. They eat, as a horse bolts 
his chopped hay, with indifference, calmness, and cleanly 
circumstances. They neither grease nor slop themselves. 
When I see a citizen in his bib and tucker, I cannot im- 
agine it a surplice. 

I am no Quaker at my food. I confess I am not in- 
different to the kinds of it. Those unctuouo morsels of 
deer's flesh were not made to be received with dispas- 
sionate services. I hate a man who swallows it, aff'ect- 
ing not to know what he is eating. I suspect his taste 
in higher matters. I shrink instinctively frcim one who 
professes to like minced veal. There is a physiognomi- 
cal character in the tastes for food. C holds that a 

man cannot have a pure mind who refuses & pple-dump- 
lings. I am not certain but he is right. Will, the decay 
of my first innocence, I confess a less and less relish 
daily for those innocuous oates. The whoU vegetable 



GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 153 

tribe have lost their gust with me. Only I stick to as- 
paragus, which .^till seems to inspire gentle thoughts. I 
am impatient and querulous under culinary disappoint- 
ments, as to come home at the dinner-hour, for instance, 
expecting some savory mess, and to find one quite taste- 
less and sapidless. Butter ill melted — that commonest of 
kitchen failures — puts me beside my tenor. — The author 
of the Rambler used to make inarticulate animal noises 
over a favorite food. Was this the music quite proper 
to be preceded by the grace? or would the pious man 
have done better to postpone his devotions to a season 
when the blessing might be contemplated with less per- 
turbation ? I quarrel with no man's tastes, nor would set 
my thin face against those excellent things, in their way, 
jollity and feasting. But as these exercises, however 
laudable, have little in them of grace or gracefulness, a 
man should be sure, before he ventures so to grace them, 
that while he is pretending his devotions otherwhere, he 
is not secretly kissing his hand to some great fish — his 
Dagon — with a special consecration of no ark but the 
fat tureen before him. Graces are the sweet preluding 
strains to the banquets of angels and children ; to the roots 
and severer repasts of the Chartreuse ; to the slender, 
but not slenderly acknowledged, refection of the poor 
and humble man ; but at the heaped-up boards of the 
pampered and the luxurious they become of dissonant 
mood, less timed and tuned to the occasion, methinks, 
than the noise of those better befitting organs would be 
which children hear tales of, at Hog's Norton. We sit 
too long at our meals, or are too curious in the study of 
them, or too disordered in our application to them, or 
engross too great a portion of those good things (which 
should be common) to our share, to be able with any 



154 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

grace to say grace. To be thankful for what we grasp 
exceeding our proportion, is to add hypocrisy to injus- 
tice. A lurking sense of this truth is what makes the 
performance of this duty so cold and spiritless a service 
at most tables. In houses where the grace is as indis- 
pensable as the napkin, who has not seen that never-set- 
tled question arise, as to who shall say it? while the 
good man of the house and the visitor clergyman, or 
some other guest, belike of next authority, from years 
of gravity, shall be bandying about the office between 
tliem as a matter of compliment, each of them not un- 
willing to shift the awkward burden of equivocal duty 
_from his own shoulders. 

I once drank tea in company with two Methodist di- 
vines of different persuasions, whom it was my fortune 
to introduce to each other for the first time that evening. 
Before the first cup was handed round, one of these rev- 
erend gentlemen put it to the other, with all due solem- 
nity, whether he chose to say anything. It seems it is 
the custom with some sectaries to put up a short prayer 
before this meal also. His reverend brother did not at 
first apprehend him, but, upon an explanation, with little 
less importance he made answer tha'j it was not a cus- 
tom known in his church : in whicli courteous evasion 
the other acquiescing for good manners' sake, or in com- 
pliance with a weak brother, tue supplementary or tea- 
grace was waived altogether. With what spirit might 
not Lucian have painted two priests of his religion play- 
ing into each other's hands the compliment of performing 
or omitting a sacrifice — the hungry god meantime, doubt- 
ful of his incense, with expectant nostrils hovering over 
the two flamens, and (as between two stools) going away 
in the end without his supper I 



MY FIRST PLAY. 155 

A short form upon these occasions is felt to want 
reverence; a long one, I am afraid, cannot escape the 
charge of impertinence. I do not quite approve of the 
epigrammatic concisenesi5 with which that equivocal wag 
(but my pleasant school-fellow) 0. Y. L , when impor- 
tu.ned for a grace, used to inquire, first slyly leering 
down the table, " Is there no clergyman here? " — signifi- 
cantly adding, "Thank G— I " ITor do I think our old 
iorm at school quite pertinent, where we used to preface 
our bald bread-and-cheese suppers with a preamble, con- 
necting with that humble blessing a recognition of ben- 
efits the most awful and overwhelming to the imagina- 
tion which religion has to offer. JSfon tunc illu erat locus, 
I remember we were put to it to reconcile the phrase 
" good creatures," upon which the blessing rested, with 
the fare set before us, willfully understanding that ex- 
pression in alow and animal sense — till some one recalled 
a legend, which told how, in the golden days of Christ's, 
tlie young Hospitallers were wont to have smoking 
joints of roast-meat upon their nightly boards, till som^ 
pious benefactor, commiserating the decencies, ratha^" 
than the palates, of the children, commuted our flesh fo^ 
garments, and gave us- -horresco r^ereTVi—troxiBevs in- 
stead of mutton. 



MY FIRST PLAY. 

At the north end of Cross Court there yet stands a 
portal, of some architectural pretensions, though reduced 
to humble use, serving at present for an entrance to a 
printing-oflice. This old doorway, if you are young, 
reader, you may not know was the identical pit-entrance 



156 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

to old Drury — Garrick's Drury — all of it that is left. 1 
never pass it without shaldng some forty years from off 
my shoulders, recurring to the evening when I passed 
through it to see my first play. The afternoon had been 
wet, and the condition of our going (the elder folks and 
myself) was, that the rain should cease. "With what a 
beating heart did I watch fiom the window the pud- 
dles, from the stillness of which I was taught to prog- 
nosticate the desired cessation! I seem to remember 
the last spurt, and the glee with which I ran to an- 
nounce it. 

We went with orders, which my godfather F. had 
sem; us. He kept the oil-shop (now Davies's) at the cor- 
ner of Featherstone Buildings, in Holborn. F. was a 
tall^ grave person, lofty in speech, and had pretensions 
abo 7Q his rank. He associated in those days with John 
Palmer, the comedian, whose gait and bearing he seemed 
to copy; if John (which is quite as likely) did not rather 
bor>row somewhat of his manner from my godfather. 
He was also known to, and visited by, Sheridan. It was 
to liis house in Holborn that young Brinsley brought hia 
first wife on her elopement with him from a boarding- 
school at Bath — the beautiful Maria Linley. My parents 
were present (over a quadrille table) when he arrived in 
the evening with his harmonious charge. From either 
of these connections, it may be inferred that my god- 
father could command an order for the then Drury Lane 
Theatre at pleasure — and, indeed, a pretty liberal issue 
of those cheap billets, in Brinsley's easy autograph, I 
have heard him say was the sole remuneration which he 
had received for many years' nightly illumination of the 
orchestra and various avenues of that theatre — and he 
was content it should be so. The honor of Sheridan's 



MY FIRST PLAY. 167 

familiarity — or supposed familiarity — was better to my 
godfather than money. 

F. was the most gentlemanly of oilmen; grandilo- 
quent, yet courteous. His delivery of the commonest 
matters of fact was Ciceronian. He had two Latin 
words almost constantly in his mouth (how odd sounds 
Latin from an oilman's lips!), which my better knowl- 
edge since has enabled me to correct. In strict pronun- 
ciation they should have been sounded mce versa — but in 
those young years they impressed me with more awe than 
they would now do, read aright from Seneca or Varro 
— in his own peculiar pronunciation, monosyllabic ally 
elaborated, or Anglicized into something like 'cerse verse. 
By an imposing manner, and the help of these distoi'ted 
syllables, he climbed (but that was little) to the higliest 
parochial honors which St. Andrew has to bestow. 

He is dead — and thus much I thought due to his 
memory, both for my first orders (little wondrous talis- 
mans ! — slight keys, and insignificant to outward sight, 
but opening to me more than Arabian paradises!) and, 
moreover, that by his testamentary beneficence I came 
into possession of the only landed property which I could 
ever call my own — situate near the roadway village of 
pleasant Puckeridge, in Hertfordshire. When I jour- 
neyed down to take possession, and planted foot on my 
own ground, the stately habits of the donor descended 
upon me, and I strode (shall I confess the vanity?) with 
larger paces over my allotment of three-quarters of an 
acre, with its commodious mansion in the midst, with 
the feeling of an English freeholder that all betwixt sky 
and centre was my own. The estate has passed into 
more prudent hands, and nothing but an agrarian can 
restore it. 



158 '^^^' ESSAYS OP ELIA. 

In those days were pit orders. Beshrew the uncom- 
fortable manager who abolished them ! — with one of 
these we went. I remember the waiting at the door — 
not that which is left — but between that and an inner 
door in shelter — when shall I be such an expectant 
again! — with the cry of nonpareils, an indispensable 
playhouse accompaniment in those days. As near as 1 
can recollect, the fashionable pronunciation of the theat- 
rical fruiteressses then was, " Chase some oranges, chase 
some num_parels, chase a bill of the play " — chase 'pro 
chuse. But when we got in, and I beheld the green 
curtain that veiled a heaven to my imagination, which 
was soon to be disclosed — the breathless anticipations ? 
endured ! I had seen something like it in the plate pre- 
fixed to Troilus and Cressida, in Rowe's Shakespeare — tho 
tent scene with Diomede — and a sight of that plate can 
always bring back in a measure the feeling of that ev«n' 
ing. The boxes at that time, full of well-dressed women 
of quality, projected over the pit; and the pilasters 
reaching down were adorned with a glistering substance 
(I know not what) under glass (as it seemed), resembling 
— a homely fancy — but I judged it to be sugar-candy — 
yet, to my raised imagination, divested of its homelier 
qualities, it appeared a glorified candy ! The orchestra 
lights at length arose, those " fair Auroras! " Once the 
bell sounded. It was to ring out yet once again — and, 
incapable of the anticipation, I reposed my shut eyes ick 
a sort of resignation upon the maternal lap. It rang th^ 
second time. The curtain drevv^ up. I was not past six 
years old, and the play was Artaxerxes! 

I had dabbled a little in the Universal History— the 
ancient part of it — and here was the court of Persia. It 
was being admitted to a sight of the past. I took no 



MY FIRST PLAY. .^9 

proper interest in the action going on, for I understood 
not its import — b'it I heard the word Darins, and I was 
in the midst of DanieL All feeling was absorbed in 
vision. Gorgeous vests, gardens, palaces, princesses, 
passed before me. I knew not players. I was in Per- 
sepolis for the time, and the burning idol of their devo- 
tion almost converted me into a worshiper. I was awe- 
struck, and believed those signitications to be something 
more than elemental fires. It was all enchantment and 
a dream. I^o such pleasure has since visited me but in 
dreams — Harlequin's invasion followed ; where, I re- 
member, the transformation of the magistrates into rev- 
erend beldams seemed to me a piece of grave historic 
justice, and the tailor carrying his own head to be as 
sober a verity as the legend of St. Denys. 

The next play to which I was taken was the Lady of 
the Manor, of which, with the exception of some scenery, 
very faint traces are left in my memory. It was followed 
by a pantomime, called Lun's Ghost — a satiric touch, I 
apprehend, upon Eich, not long since dead — but to my 
apprehension ^too sincere for satire), Lun was as remote 
a piece of antiquity as Lud — the father of a line of Har- 
lequins — transmitting his dagger of lath (the wooden 
sceptre) through countless ages. I saw the primeval 
Motley come from his silent tomb in a ghastly vest of 
white patchwork, like the apparition of a dead rainbow. 
So Harlequins (thought I) look when they are dead. 

My third play followed in quick succession. It was 
the Way of the World. I think I must have sat at it as 
grave as a judge; for, I remember, the hysteric affec- 
tations of good Lady Wishfort affected me like some 
solemn tragic passion. Robinson Crusoe followed; in 
which Crusoe, man Friday, and the parrot, were as 



160 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

good and authentic as in the story. The clownery and 
pantaloonery of these pantomimes have clean passed out 
of my head. I believe I no more laughed at them, than 
at the same age I should have been disposed to laugh at 
the grotesque Gothic heads (seeming to me then replete 
with devout meaning) that gape, and grin, in stone 
around the inside of the old Round Church (my church) 
of the Templars. 

I saw these plays in the season 1781-^82, when I was 
from six to seven years old. After the intervention of 
six or seven other years (for at school all play-going was 
inhibited) I again entered the doors of a theatre. That 
old Artaxerxes evening had never done ringing in my 
fancy. I expected the same feelings to come again with 
the same occasion. But we differ from ourselves less at 
sixty and sixteen, than the latter does from six. In that 
interval what had I not lost ! At the first period I knew 
nothing, understood nothing, discriminated nothing. I 
felt all, loved all, wondered all — 

" Was nourished, I could not tell how — " 

I had left the temple a devotee, and was returned a ra- 
tionalist. The same things were there materially; but 
the emblem, the refei-ence, was gone ! The green cur- 
tain was no longer a veil, drawn between two worlds, 
the unfolding of which was to bring back past ages to 
present a " royal ghost" — but a certain quantity of green 
baize, which was to separate the audience for a given 
time from certain of their fellow-men who were to come Mi 
forward and pretend those parts. The lights — the or- ~ 
chestra-lights^— came up a clumsy machinery. The first 
ring, and the second ring, was now hut a trick of the 
prompter's bell — which had been, like the note of the jl 



BREAM-CHILDREN: A REVERIE. IgJ 

eackoo, a phantom of a voice, no hand seen or guessed 
at which ministered to its warning. The actors were 
roen and women painted. I thought the fault was in 
them ; but it was in myself, and the alteration which 
those many centuries — of six short twelvemonths — had 
wrought in me. Perhaps it was fortunate for me that 
the play of the evening was but an indifferent comedy, 
as it gave me time to crop some unreasonable expecta- 
tions, which might have interfered with the genuine 
emotions with which I was soon after enabled to enter 
upon the first appearance to m« of Mrs. Siddons in Isa- 
bella. Comparison and retrospection soon yielded to 
the present attraction of the scene ; and the theatre be- 
came to me, upon a new stock, the most delightful ** ' 
recreations. 



DREAM-OHILDRElSr: A REVERIE. 

Childeen love to listen to stories about their elders, 
when they were children; to stretch their imagination 
to the conception of a traditionary great-uncle or gran- 
dame, whom they never saw. It was in this spirit that 
my little ones crept about me the other evening to hear 
about their great-grandmother Field, who lived in a great 
house in Forfolk (a hundred times bigger than that in 
which they and pana lived) which had been the scene — 
so at least it was generally believed in that part of the 
country — of the tragic incidents which they had lately 
become familiar with from the ballad of the Children in 
the Wood. Certain it is that the whole story of the chil- 
dren and their cruel uncle was to be seen fairly carved 
out in wood upon the chimney-piece of the great hallj 

11 



16S THE ESSAYS OF ELlA. 

the' whole story down to the Eobin Redbreasts! till a 
foolish rich person pulled it down to set np a marble one 
of modern invention in its stead, with no story npon it. 
Here Alice put out one of her dear mother's looks, too ten- 
der to be called upbraiding. Then I went on to say, how 
religious and how good their great- grandmother Field 
was, how beloved and respected by everybody, though 
she was not indeed the mistress of this great house, but 
had only the charge of it (and yet in some respects she 
might be said to be the mistress of it too) committed to 
her by the owner, who preferred living in a newer and 
more fashionable mansion which he had purchased some- 
where in the adjoining county ; but still she lived in it 
in a manner as if it had been her own, and kept up the 
dignity of the great house in a sort while she lived, 
which afterward came to decay, and was nearly pulled 
down, and all its old ornaments stripped and carried 
av/ay to the owner's other house, where they were set 
up, and looked as awkward as if some one were to carry 
away the old tombs they had seen lately at the Abbey, 
and stick them up in Lady O.'s tawdry gilt drawing- 
room. Here John smiled, as much as to say, " That 
would be foolish indeed." And then I told how, when she 
came to die, her funeral was attended by a concourse of 
all the poor, and some of the gentry too, of the neighbor- 
hood for many miles round, to show their respect for her 
memory, because she had been such a good and religious 
woman, so good, indeed, that she knew all the Psaltery 
by heart, ay, and a great part of the Testament besideso 
Here little Alice spread her hands. Then I told what a 
tall, upright, graceful person their great grandmother 
Field once was ; and how in her youth she was esteemed 
the best dancer — here Alice's little right foot played an 



DREAM-CHILDREN: A REVERIE. 163 

myolantarj movement, till, upon my looking grave, it 
desisted — the best dancer, I was saying, in the county, 
till a cruel disease, called a cancer, came, and bowed her 
down with pain ; but it could never bend her good spir- 
its, or make them stoop, but they were still upright, be- 
cause she was so good and religious. Then I told how 
she was used to sleep by herself in a lone chamber of the 
great lone house, and how she believed that an apparition 
of two infants was to be seen at midnight gliding up and 
down the great staircase near where she slept, but she 
said " Those innocents would do her no harm ; " and how 
frightened I used to be, though in those days I had my 
maid to sleep with me, because I was never half so good 
or religious as she — and yet I never saw the infants. 
Here John expanded all his eyebrows and tried to look 
courageous. Then I told how good she was to all her 
grandchildren, having us to the great house in the holi- 
days, where I in particular used to spend many hours 
by myself, in gazing upon the old busts of the twelve 
OsBsars, that had been the Emperors of Rome, till the 
old marble heads would seem to live again, or I to be 
turned into marble with them ; how I never could be 
tired with roaming about that huge mansion, with its 
vast empty rooms, with their worn-out hangings, flutter^ 
ing tapestry, and carved oaken panels, with the gilding 
almost rubbed out — sometimes in the spacious old-fash- 
ioned gardens, which I had almost to myself, unless when 
aow and then a solitary gar(^mng-man would cross me 
— and how the nectarines and peaches hung upon the 
walls, without my ever offering to pluck them, because 
they were forbidden fruit, unless now and then — and 
because I had more pleasure in strolling about among 
the old, melancholy-looking yew-trees, or the firs, and 



164 



THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 



picking up the red berries, and the fir-apples, whicli 
were good for nothing hut to look at — or in lying about 
upon the fresh grass with all the fine garden smells around 
me — or basking in the orangery, till I could almost fancy 
mj^seif ripening, too, along with the oranges and the 
limes in that grateful warmth — or in watching the dace 
tiiat darted to and fro in the fish-pond, at the bottom of 
the garden, with here and there a great sulky pike hang- 
ing midway down the water in silent state, as if it 
mocked at their impertinent friskings — I had more 
pleasure in these busy-idle diversions than in all the 
sweet flavors of peaches, nectarines, oranges, and such- 
like common baits of children. Here John slyly depos- 
ited back upon the plate a bunch of grapes, which, not 
unobserved by Alice, he had meditated dividing with 
her, and both seemed willing to relinquish them for the 
present as irrelevant. Then, in somewhat a more height- 
ened tone, I told how, though their great-grandmother 
Field loved all her grandchildren, yet in an especial 
manner she might be said to love their Uncle John 

L , because he was so handsome and spirited a youth, 

and a king to the rest of us ; and, instead of moping 
about in solitary corners, like some of us, he would 
mount the most mettlesome horse he could get, when 
but an imp no bigger than themselves, and make it carry 
him half over the county in a morning, and join the 
hunters when there were any out — and yet he loved the 
old great house and gardens too, but had too much spirit 
to be always pent up within their boundaries — and how 
their uncle grew up to man's estate as brave as he was 
handsome, to the admiration of everybody, but of their 
great-grandmother Field most especially; and how he 
used to carry me upon his back when I was a lame-foot- 



DREAM-CHILDREN: A REVERIE. 165 

ea boy — for lie was a good bit older than me — many a 
mile when I could not walk for pain — and how in after- 
life he became lame-footed too, and I did not always (I 
fear) make allowances enough for him when he was im- 
patient, and in pain, nor remember sufficiently how con- 
siderate he had been to me when I was lame-footed ; 
and how, when he died, though he had not been dead 
an hour, it seemed as if he had died a great while ago, 
such a distance there is betwixt life and death : and 
how I bore his death as I thought pretty well at first, 
but afterward it haunted and haunted me ; and though 
I did not cry or take it to heart as some do, and as I 
think he would have done if I had died, yet I missed 
him all day long, and knew not till then how much I had 
loved him. I missed his kindness, and I missed his cross- 
ness, and wished him to be alive again, to be quarreling 
with him (for we quarreled sometimes), rather than not 
have him again, and was as uneasy without him, as he 
their poor uncle must have been when the doctor took off 
his limb. — Here the children fell a-crying, and asked if 
their little mourning which they had on was not for Uncle 
John, and they looked up and prayed me not to go on 
about their uncle, but to tell them some stories about 
their pretty dead mother. Then I told how for seven 
long years, in hope sometimes, sometimes in despair, yet 
persisting ever, I courted the fair Alice W — n ; and, as 
much as children could understand, I explained to them 
what coyness, and difficulty, and denial, meant in maid- 
ens — when suddenly turning to Alice, the soul of the 
first Alice looked out at her eyes with such a reality of 
re-presentment, that I became in doubt which of them 
stood there before me, or whose that bright hair was; 
and while I stood gazing, both the childi-en gradually 



166 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

grew fainter to my view, receding, and still receding, till 
nothing at last but too mournful features were seen in 
the uttermost distance, which, without speech, strangely 
impressed upon me the effects of speech : "We are not 
of Alice, nor of thee, nor are we children at all. The 
children of Alice call Bartrum father. "We are nothing; 
less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might 
have been, and must wait upon the tedious shores of 
Lethe millions of ages before we have existence, and a 
name " — and immediately awaking, I found myself qui- 
etly seated in my bachelor arm-chair, where I had fallen 
asleep, with the faithful Bridget unchanged by my side- 
but John L. (or James Elia) was gone forever. 



DISTANT COKRESPONDENTS. 

IN A LETTER TO B. F., ESQ., AT SYDNEY, NEW 
SOUTH WALES. 

My deae F. : When I think how welcome the sight 
•of a letter from the world where you were born must be 
to you in that strange one to which you have been trans- 
planted, I feel some compunctious visitings at my long 
silence. But, indeed, it is no easy effort to set about a 
correspondence at our distance. The weary world of 
waters between us oppresses the imagination. It is diffi- 
cult to conceive how a scrawl of mine should ever stretch 
across it. It is a sort of presumption to expect that 
one's thoughts should live so far. It is like writing for 
posterity ; and reminds me of one of Mrs. RoM'e's super- 
scriptions, " Alcander to Strephon in the shades." Cow- 



DISTANT CORRBSFONDENTa 167 

ley's Post- Angel is no more than would be expedient in 
such an intercourse. One drops a packet at Lombard 
Street, and in twenty-four hours a friend in Cumberland 
gets it as fresh as if it came in ice. It is only like whis- 
pering through a long trumpet. But suppose a tube let 
down from the moon, with yourself at one end, and the 
man at the other ; it \70uld be some balk to the spirit 
of conversation, if you knew that the dialogue exchanged 
with that interesting theosophist would take two or three 
revolutions of a higher luminary in its passage. Yet, 
for aught I know, you may be some parasangs nigher 
that primitive idea — Plato's man — than we in England 
here have the honor to reckon ourselves. 

Epistolary matter usually compriseth three topics : 
news, sentiment, and puns. In the latter, I include all 
non-serious subjects ; or subjects serious in themselves, 
but, treated after my fashion, non-seriously. And first, 
for news. In them the most desirable circumstance, I 
suppose, is that they shall be true. But what security 
can I hav^e that what I now send you for truth shall not, 
before you get it, unaccountably turn into a lie ? For 
instance, our mutual friend P. is at this present writing — 
my JSFoic — in good health, and enjoys a fair share of 
worldly reputation. You are glad to hear it. This is 
natural and friendly. But at this present reading — your 
Now — he may possibly be in the Bench, or going to be 
hanged, which in reason ought to abate something of 
your transport (i. e., at hearing he was well, etc.), or at 
least considerably to modify it. I am going to the play 
this evening to have a laugh with Mimden. You have 

no theatre, I think you told me, in your land of d d 

realities. You naturally lick your lips, and envy me my 
felicity. Think but a moment, and you will correct the 



168 TFIE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

hateful emotion. Why is it Sunday morning witL you, 
and 1823 ? This confusion of tenses, this grand sole- 
cism of two presents^ is in a degree common to all post- 
age. But if I sent you word to Bath or Devizes, that I 
was expecting the aforesaid treat this evening, though at 
the moment you received the intelligence, my full feast 
of fun would he over, yet there would he for a day or 
two after, as you would well know, a smack, a relish 
left upon my mental palate, which would give rational 
encouragement for you to foster a portion at least of the 
disagreeahle passion which it was in part my intention 
to produce. But, ten months hence, your envy or your 
sympathy would he as useless as a passion spent upon 
the dead. Not only does truth, in these long intervals, 
un- essence herself, but (what is harder) one cannot vent- 
ure a crude fiction, for the fear that it may ripen into a 
truth upon the voyage. What a wild, improbable banter 
I put upon you some three years since — of "Will Weath- 
erall having married a servant-maid ! I remember grave- 
ly consulting you how we were to receive her — for WilFs 
wife was in no case to be rejected ; and your no less se- 
rious replication in the matter ; how tenderly you ad- 
vised an abstemious introduction of literary topics before 
the lady, with a caution not to be too forward in bring- 
ing on the carpet matters more within the sphere of her 
intelligence; your deliberate judgment, or rather wise 
suspension of sentence, how far jacks, and spits, and 
mops, could with propriety be introduced as subjects ; 
whether the conscious avoiding of all such matters in 
discourse would not have a worse look than the taking 
of them casually in our way ; in what manner we should 
carry ourselves to our maid Becky, Mrs. William Weath- 
erall being by; whether we should show jnore delicacy, 



DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 169 

and a truer sense of respect for Will's wife, "by treating 
Becky with our customary chiding before her, or by an 
unusual deferential civility paid to Becky as to a person 
of great worth, but thrown by the caprice of fate into a 
humble station. There were difficulties, I remember, on 
both sides, which you did me the favor to state with the 
preeision of a lawyer, united to the tenderness of a friend. 
I laughed ia my sleeve at your solemn pleadings, when 
lo ! w^hile I was valuing myself upon this flam put upon you 
in New South Wales, the devil in England, jealous pos- 
sibly of any lie-children not his own or working after 
my copy, has actually instigated our friend (not three 
days since) to the commission of a matrimony, which 
I had only conjured up for your diversion. William 
Weatherall has married Mrs. Cotterel's maid. But to 
take it in its truest sense, you will see, my dear F., that 
news from me must become history to you ; which I 
neither profess to write, nor indeed care much for read- 
ing. No person, under a diviner, can with any prospect 
of veracity conduct a correspondence at such an arm's 
length. Two prophets, indeed, might thus interchange 
intelligence with effect ; the epoch of the writer (Ha- 
bakkuk) falling in with the true present time of the re- 
ceiver (Daniel) ; but, then, we are no prophets. 

Then as to sentiment. It fares little better with that. 
This kind of dish, above all, requires to be served up 
hot; or sent off in water- plates, that your friend may 
have it almost as warm as yourself. If it have time to 
cool, it is the most tasteless of all cold meats. I have 
often smiled at a conceit of the late Lord 0. It seems 
that, traveling somewhere about Geneva, he came -,0 
some pretty green spot, or nook where a willow, ur 
something hung so fantastically and invitingly over a 



170 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A. 

stream—was it? — or a rock ? — no matter — "but the still- 
ness and the repose, after a weary journey, 'tis likely, in 
a languid moment of his Lordship's hot restless life, so 
took his fancy that he could imagine no place so proper, 
in the event of his death, to lay his hones in. This was 
all very natural and excusable as a sentiment, and shows 
his character in a very pleasing light. But when from 
a passing sentiment it came to he an act ; and when, by 
a positive testamentary disposal, his remains were actu- 
ally carried all that way from England ; who was there, 
some desperate sentimentalists excepted, that did not 
ask the question. Why could not his Lordship have found 
a spot as solitary, a nook as romantic, a tree as green 
and pendent, with a stream as emblematic to his pur- 
pose, in Surrey, in Dorset, or in Devon ? Conceive the 
sentiment boarded up, freighted, entered at the Custom- 
House (startling the tide-waiters with the novelty), 
hoisted into a ship. Conceive it pawed about and han- 
dled between the rude jests of tarpaulin ruflSans — a 
thing of its delicate texture — the salt bilge wetting it till 
it became as vapid as a damaged lustring. Suppose it in 
material danger (mariners have some superstition about 
sentiments) of being tossed over in a fresh gale to some 
propitiatory shark (spirit of Saint Gothard, save us from 
a quietus so foreign to the deviser's purpose !) ; but it has 
happily evaded a fishy consummation. Trace it then to 
its lucky landing — at Lyons shall we say ? — I have not 
the map before me — jostled upon four men's shoulders — 
baiting at this town — stopping to refresh at t'other vil- 
lage — waiting a passport here, a license there ; the sanc- 
tion of the magistracy in this district, the concurrence 
of the ecclesiastics in that canton ; till at length it ar- 
rives at its destination, tired out and jaded, from a brisk 



DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. I71 

sentiment, into a feature of silly pride, or tawdry sense- 
less affectation. How few sentiments, my dear F., I am 
afraid we can set down, in the sailor's phrase, as quite 
sea-worthy ! 

Lastly, as to the agreeable levities, which, though 
contemptible in bulk, are the twinkling corpuscula which 
should irradiate a right friendly epistle — your puns and 
small jests are, I apprehend, extremely circumsoribed in 
their sphere of action. They are so far from a capacity 
of being packed up and sent beyond sea, they will 
scarce endure to be transported by hand from this room 
to the next. Their vigor is as the instant of their birth. 
Their nutriment for their brief existence is the intel- 
lectual atmosphere of the by-standers: or this last is the 
fine slime of Nilus — the melior lutus — whose maternal 
recipiency is as necessary as the sol pater to their equiv- 
ocal generation. A pun hath a hearty kind of present 
ear-kissing smack with it : you can no more transmit it 
in its pristine flavor, than you can send a kiss. — Have 
you not tried in some instances to palm off a yesterday's 
pun upon a gentleman, and has it answered ? Not but it 
was new to bis hearing, but it did not seem to come new 
from you. It did not hitch in. It was like picking up 
at a village ale-house a two-days'-old newspaper. You 
have not seen it before, but you resent the stale thing as 
an affront. This sort of merchandise above all requires 
a quick return. A pun, and its recognitory laugh, must 
be co-instantaneous. The one is the brisk lightning, the 
other the fierce thunder. A moment's interval, and the 
link is snapped. A pun is reflected from a friend's face as 
from a miiTor. Who would consult his sweet visnomy, 
if the polished surface were two or three minutes (not 
to speak of twelve months, my dear F.) in giving back 
its copy ? 



172 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

I cannot image to myself whereabout you are. 
When I try to fix it, Peter Wilkins's island comes across 
me. Sometimes you seem to be in theSades of Thieves. 
I see Diogenes prjdng among you with his perpetual 
fruitless lantern. What must you be willing by this time 
to give for the sight of an honest man ! You must al- 
most have forgotten how we look. And tell me, what 
your Sydneyites do ? are they th**v*ng all day long ? 
Merciful heaven ! what property can stand against such 
a depredation! The kangaroos — your Aborigines — do 
they keep their primitive simplicity un-Europe-tainted, 
with those little short fore-puds, looking like a lesson 
framed by Nature to the pick-pocket ! Marry, for div- 
iHg into fobs they are rather lamely provided, a priori; 
but if the hue-and-cry were once up, they would show as 
fair a pair of hind-shifters as the expertest loco-motor in 
the colony. — We hear the most improbable tales at this 
distance. Pray is it true that the young Spartans among 
you are born with six fingers, which spoils their scan- 
ning ? — It must look very odd ; but use reconciles. For 
their scansion, it is less to be regretted, for if they take 
it into their heads to be poets, it is odds but they turn 
out, the greater part of them, vile plagiarists. — Is there 
much difference to see, too, between the son of a th**f, 
and the grandson ? or where does the taint stop ? Do 
you bleach in three or in four generations ? — I have many 
questions to put, but ten Delphic voyages can be made in 
a shorter time than it will take to satisfy my scruples. — 
Do you grow your own hemp ? — What is your staple trade, 
— exclusive of the national profession, I mean? Your 
locksmiths, I take it, are some of your great capitalists. 

I am insensibly chatting to you as familiarly as when 
we used to exchange good-morrows out of our old con- 



€-' 



THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. I73 

tiguous windows, in pump-famed Hare Court in the Tem- 
ple. Why did jou ever leave that quiet corner ? — Why 
did I? — with its complement of four poor elms, from 
whose smoke-dyed barks, the theme of jesting ruralists, 
I picked my first lady-birds ! My heart is as dry as that 
spring sometimes proves in a thirsty August, when I re- 
vert to the space that is between us ; a length of passage 
enough to render obsolete the phrases of our English 
letters before they can reach you. But while I talk, I 
think you hear me — thoughts dallying with vain sur- 
mise — 

" Aye me ! while thee the seas and sounding shores 
Hold far away." 

Come back, before I am grown into a very old man, so 
/ \as you shall hardly know me. Come, before Bridget walks 
on crutches. Girls whom you left children have become 
sage matrons while you are tarrying there. The bloom- 
ing Miss W — r (you remember Sally W — r) called upon 
us yesterday, an aged crone. Folks, whom you knew, 
die off every year. Formerly, I thought that death was 
wearing out— I stood ramparted about with so many 
healthy friends. The departure of J. W., two springs 
back, corrected my delusion. Since then the old divorcer 
has been busy. If you do not make haste to return, 
there will be little left to greet you, of me, or mine. 



THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 

I LIKE to meet a sweep — understand me — not a 
grown sweeper — old chimney-sweepers are by no means 
attractive — but one of those tender novices, blooming 



174 THE ESSAYS OP ELIA. 

through their first nigritude, the maternal washings not 
quite effaced from the cheek — such as come forth with 
the dawn, or somewhat earlier, with their little profes- 
sional notes sounding like the 'peejp peep of a young spar- 
row; or liker to the matin lark should I pronounce 
them, in their aerial ascents not seldom anticipating the 
sunrise? 

I have a kindly yearning toward these dim specks — 
poor blots — innocent blacknesses — 

I reverence these young Africans of our own growth 
— these almost clergy imps, who sport their cloth with- 
out assumption; and from their little pulpits (the tops of 
chimneys), in the nipping air of a December morning, 
preach a lesson of patience to mankind. 

When a child, what a mysterious pleasure it was to 
witness their operation ! to see a chit no bigger than 
one's self, enter, one knew not by what process, into 
what seemed the fauces Averni — to pursue him in ima- 
gination, as he went sounding on through so many dark, 
stifling caverns, horrid shades! — to shudder with the 
idea that "now, surely, he must be lost forever ! " — to 
revive at hearing his feeble shout of discovered daylight 
^— and then (O fullness of delight!) running out-of-doors, 
to come just in time to see the sable phenomenon emerge 
in safety, the brandished weapon of his art victorious 
like some flag waved over a conquered citadel ! I seem 
to remember having been told that a bad sweep was 
once left in a stack with his brush, to indicate which 
way the wind blew. It was an awful spectacle certainly ; 
not much unlike the old stage direction in "Macbeth," 
where the " Apparition of a child crowned, with a tree 
in his hand, rises." 

Eeader, if thou meetest one of these small gentry Id 



THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 175 

thy early rambles, it is good to give Mm a penny. It is 
better to give him twopence. If it be starving weather, 
and to the proper troubles of his hard occupation, a pair 
of kibed heels (no nniisnal accompaniment) be super- 
added, the demand on thy humanity will surely rise to a 
tester. 

There is a composition, the groundwork of which I 
have understood to be the sweet wood 'yclept sassafras, 
This wood boiled down to a kind of tea, and tempered, 
with an infusion of milk and sugar, hath to some tastew 
a delicacy beyond the China luxury. I know noi how 
thy palate may relish it ; for myself, with every defer- 
ence to the judicious Mr. Kead, who hath time out of 
mind kept open a shop (the only one he avers in London) 
for the vending of this " wholesome and pleasant bever- 
age," on the south side of Fleet Street, as thou approach- 
est Bridge Street — the only Salopian house — I have 
never yet ventured to dip my own particular lip in a 
basin of his commended ingredients — a cautious premo- 
nition to the olfactos-ies constantly whispering to me, 
that my stomach must infallibly, with all due courtesy, 
decline it. Yet I have seen palates, otherwise not 
uninstructed In dietetical elegancies, sup it up with 
avidity. 

I know kiot by what particular conformation of the 
organ It happens, but I have always found that this 
composition is surprisingly gratifying to the palate of a 
yuung chimney-sweeper — whether the oily particles 
(sassafras is slightly oleaginous) do attenuate and soften 
the fuliginous concretions, which are sometimes found 
(in dissections) to adhere to the roof of the mouth in 
these unfledged practitioners ; or whether IsTature, sensi- 
ble that she had mingled too much of bitter wood in the 



l'J'6 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

lot of these raw victims, caused to grow out of the 
earth her sassafras for a sweet lenitive— but so it is, that 
no possible taste or odor to the senses of a young chim- 
ney-sweeper can convey a delicate excitement compar- 
able to this mixture. Being penniless, they will yet 
hang their black heads over the ascending steam, to 
gratify one sense if possible, seemingly no less pleased 
than those domestic animals — cats — when they purr over 
a new-found sprig of valerian. There is something 
more in these sympathies than philosophy can incul- 
cate. 

Now, albeit Mr. Read boasteth, not without reason, 
that his is the only Salopian house ; yet be it known to 
thee, reader — if thou art one who keepest what are 
called good hours, thou art haply ignorant of the fact — • 
he hath a race of industrious imitators, who from stalls, 
and under open sky, dispense the same savory mess to 
humbler customers, at that dead time of the dawn, when 
(as extremes meet) the rake, reeling home from his mid- 
night cups, and the hard-handed artisan leaviug his bed 
to resume the premature labors of the day, jostle, not 
unfrequently to the manifest disconcerting of the former, 
for the honors of the pavement. It is the time when, 
in summer, between the expired and the not yet relu- 
mined kitchen-fires, the kennels of our fair metropolis 
give forth their least satisfactory odors. The rake, who 
wisheth to dissipate his o'ernight vapors in more grate- 
ful coffee, curses the ungenial fume, as he passeth ; but 
the artisan stops to taste, and blesses the fragrant br'Bak- 
fast. 

This is saloop — the precocious herb-woman's darling 
— the delight of the early gardener, who transports his 
smoking cabbages by break of day from Hammersmith 



THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 177 

to Oovent Garden's famed piazzas — the delight, and oh ! 
I fear, too often the envj, of the unpennied sweep. 
Him shouldst thou haply encounter, with his dim visage 
pendent over the grateful steam, regale him with a 
sumptuous basin (it will cost thee but tliree-halfpennies) 
and a slice of delicate bread-and-butter (an added half- 
penny) — so may thy culinary fires, eased of the o'er- 
charged secretions from thy worse-placed hospitalities, 
curl up a lighter volume to the welkin — so may th@ 
descending soot never taint thy costly, well-ingredienced 
soups — nor the odious cry, quick-reaching from street to 
street, of the fired chimney^ invite the rattling engines 
from ten adjacent parishes, to disturb for a casual scin- 
tillation thy peace and pocket ! 

I am by nature extremely susceptible of street af- 
fronts; the jeers and taunts of the populace; the low- 
bred triumph they display over the casual trip, or splashed 
stocking of a gentleman. Yet can I endure the joculari- 
ty of a young sweep with something more than forgive- 
ness. — In the last winter but one, pacing along Cheapside 
with my accustomed precipitation when I walk west- 
ward, a treacherous slide brought me upon my back in 
an instant. I scrambled up with pain and shame enough 
— yet outwardly trying to face it down, as if nothing had 
happened — when the roguish grin of one of these young 
wits encountered me. There he stood, pointing me out 
with his dusky finger to the mob, and to a poor woman 
(I suppose his mother) in particular, till the tears, for the 
exquisiteness of the fun (so he thought it), worked them- 
selves out at the corners of his poor, red eyes, red from 
many a previous weeping, and soot-inflamed, yet twin- 
kling through all with such a joy, snatched out of deso- 
lation, that Hogarth but Hogarth has go^ him already 

1^ 



178 fHE ESSAYS OF ELTA. 

(how could he miss him ?) in the Marcli to Finchlej, 
grinning at the pie-man— there lie stood, as he stands in 
the picture, irremovable, as if tlie jest were to last for- 
ever — with such a maximum of glee, and minimum of 
mischief, in his mirth — for the grin of a genuine sweep 
hath absolutely no malice in it — that I could have been 
content, if tlie honor of a gentleman might endure it, to 
have remained his butt and his mockery till midnight. 

I am by theory obdurate to the seductiveness of what 
are called a line set of teeth. Every pair of rosy lips 
(the ladies must pardon me) is a casket presumably hold- 
ing such jewels ; but, methinks, they should take leave to 
" air " them as frugally as possible. The fine lady, or fine 
gentleman, who show me their teeth, show me bones. 
Yet must I confess that, from the mouth of a true sweep 
a display (even to ostentation) of those white and shining 
ossifications, strikes me as an agreeable anomaly in man- 
ners, and an allowable piece of foppery. It is, as when 

" A sable cloud 
Turns forth her silver Tming on the night." 

It is like some remnant of gentry not quite extinct ; a 
badge of better days ; a hint of nobility — and doubtlese, 
under the obscuring darkness and double night of their 
forlorn disguisement, oftentimes lurketh good blood, and 
gentle conditions, derived from lost ancestry, and a 
lapsed pedigree. The premature apprenticements of 
these tender victims give but too much encouragement, 
I fear, to clandestine and almost infantile abductions; 
the seeds of civility and true courtesy, so often dt^^cerni- 
ble in these young grafts (not otherwise to be accounted 
for) plainly hint at some forced adoptions ; many noble 
Rachels mourning for their children, even in our days, 



• THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 179 

countenance the fact; the tales of fairy-sphiting may 
shadow a lamentable verity, and the recovery of the 
young Montagu be but a solitary instance of good for- 
tune out of many irreparable and hopeless defiUations. 

In one of the state-beds at Arundel Castle, a few 
years since— under a ducal canopy — (that seat of the 
Howards is an object of curiosity to visitors, chiefly for 
its beds, in which the late duke was especially a con- 
noisseur) — encircled with curtains of delicatest crimson, 
with starry coronets interwoven — folded between a pair 
of sheets whiter and softer than the lap where Yenus 
lulled Ascanius — was discovered by chance, after all meth- 
ods of search had failed, at noonday, fast asleep, a lost 
chimney-sweeper. The little creature, having somehow 
confounded his passage among the intricacies of those 
lordly chimneys, by some unknown aperture had alighted 
upon this magnificent chamber; and, tired with his tedi- 
ous explorations, was unable to resist the delicious in- 
viteraent to repose which he there saw exhibited ; so, 
creeping between the sheets very quietly, laid his black 
head upon the pillow, and slept like a young Howard. 

Such is the account given to the visitors at the Castle. 
— But I cannot help seeming to perceive a confirmation 
of what I have just hinted at in this story. A high in- 
stinct was at work in the case, or I am mistaken. Is it 
probable that a poor child of that description, with what- 
ever weariness he might be visited, would have ventured, 
under such a penalty as ho would be taught to expect, to 
uncov^er the sheets of a duke's bed, and deliberately to 
lay himself down between them, when the rug, or the 
carpet, presented an obvious couch, still far abov« his 
pretensions — is this probable, T would ask, if the great 
power of Nature, which I contend for, had not been 



180 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

manifested within him, prompting to the adventure'^ 
Doubtless this young nobleman (for such my mind mis- 
gives me that he must be) was allured by some memory, 
not amounting to full consciousness, of his condition in 
infancy, when he was used to be lapped by his mother, 
or his nurse, in Just such sheets as he there found, into 
which he was now but creeping back as into his proper 
incunabula, and resting-place. — By no other theory than 
by this sentiment of a preexistent state (as I may call it), 
can I explain a deed so venturous, and, indeed, upon any 
other system so indecorous, in this tender, but unseason- 
able, sleeper. 

My present friend, Jem White, was so impressed with 
a belief of metamorphoses like this frequently taking 
place, that in some sort to reverse the wrongs of fortune 
in these poor changelings, he instituted an annual feast 
of chimney-sweepers, at which it was his pleasure to 
officiate as host and waiter. It was a solemn supper, 
held in Smithfield, upon the yearly return of the fair 
of St. Bartholomew. Cards were issued a week before 
to the master-sweeps in and about the metropolis, con- 
fining the invitation to their younger fry. Now and 
then an elderly stripling would get in among us, and be 
good-naturedly winked at; but our main body were 
infantry. One unfortunate wight, indeed, who, relying 
upon his dusky suit, had intruded himself into our 
party, but, by tokens, was providentially discovered in 
time to be no chimney-sweeper (all is not soot which 
looks so), was quoited out of the presence with uni- 
versal indignation, as not having on the wedding-gar- 
ment; but in general the greatest harmony prevailed. 
The place chosen was a convenient spot among the pens, 
at the north side of the fair, not so far distant as to be 



THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 18] 

impervious to the agreeable hubbub of that vanity ; but 
remote enough not to be obvious to the interruption 
of every gaping spectator in it. The guests assemble^ 
about seven. In those little temporary parlors three 
tables were spread with napery, not so fine as substan- 
tial, and at every board a comely hostess presided with 
her pan of hissing sausages. The nostrils of the young- 
rogues dilated at the savor. James White, as head- 
waiter, had charge of the first table ; and myself, with 
our trusty companion Bigod, ordinarily ministered to 
the other two. There was clambering and jostling, you 
may be sure, who should get at the first table — for Roch- 
ester, in his maddest days, could not have done the hu- 
mors of the scene with more spirit than my friend. 
After some general expression of thanks for the honor 
the company had done him, his inaugural ceremony was 
to clasp the greasy waist of old Dame Ursula (the fattest 
of the three), that stood frying and fretting, half-blessing, 
half-cursing " the gentleman," and imprint upon her 
chaste lips a tender salute, whereat the universal host 
would set up a shout that tore the concave, while hun- 
dreds of grinning teeth startled the night with their 
brightness. Oh, it was a pleasure to see the sable youn- 
kers lick in the unctuous meat, with Ms more unctuous 
sayings — how he would fit the tit-bits to the puny 
mouths, reserving the lengthier links for the seniors — 
how he would intercept a morsel even in the jaws of 
some young desperado, declaring it "must to the pan 
again to be browned, for it was not fit for a gentleman's 
eating" — how he would recommend this slice of white 
bread, or that piece of kissing-crust, to a tender juvenile, 
advising them all to have a care of cracking their teeth, 
which were their best patrimony — how genteelly he 



182 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

would deal about the small ale, as if it were wine, nam- 
ing the brewer, and protesting, if it were not good, he 
should lose their custom ; with a special recommenda- 
tion to wipe the lip before drinking. Then we had our 
toasts—" The King "— " The Cloth "—which, whether 
they understood or not, was equally diverting and flat- 
tering; and, for a crowning sentiment, which never 
failed, "May the Brush supersede the Laurel!" All 
these, and fifty other fancies, which were rather felt 
than comprehended by his guests, would he utter, stand- 
ing upon tables, and prefacing every sentiment with a 
'" Gentlemen, give me leave to propose so and so," which 
was a prodigious comfort to those young orphans ; erery 
now and then stuffing into his mouth (for it did not do 
to be squeamish on these occasions) indiscriminate pieces 
of those reeking sausages, which pleased them mightily, 
and was the savoriest part, you may believe, of the en- 
tertainment. 

" Golden lads and lasses must, 
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust." — 

James White is extinct, and with him these suppers have 
long ceased. He carried away with him half the fun of 
the world when he died — of my world at least. His old 
clients look for him among the pens ; and, missing him, 
reproach the altered feast of St. Bartholomew, and the 
glory of Smithfield departed forever. 



COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS. 183 
A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGG^AES 

IN THE METEOPOLIS. 

The all-sweeping besom of societarian reformation — 
your only modern Alcides's club to rid the time of its 
abuses— is uplift with many-handed sway to extirpate 
the last fluttering tatters of the bugbear Mendicity from 
the metropolis. Scrips, wallets, bags — staves, dogs, and 
crutches — the whole mendicant fraternity, with all their 
baggage, are fast posting out of the purlieus of this 
eleventh persecution. From the crowded crossing, from 
the corners of streets and turnings of alleys, the parting 
Genius of Beggary is " with sighing sent." 

I do not approve of this wholesale going to work, 
this impertinent crusado, or Tjellum ad exterminationem, 
proclaimed against a species. Much good might be 
sucked from these beggars. 

They were the oldest and the honorablest form of 
pauperism. Their appeals w^ere to our common nature; 
less revolting to an ingenious mind than to be a suppliant 
to the particular humors or caprice of any fellow-creat- 
ure, or set of fellow-creatures, parochial or societarian. 
Theirs were the only rates uninvidious in the levy, un- 
grudged in the assessment. 

There was a dignity springing from the very depth 
of their desolation ; as to be naked is to be so much 
nearer to the being a man, than to go in livery. 

The greatest spirits have felt this in their reverses ; 
and when Dionysius from king turned schoolmaster, do 
we feel anything toward him but contempt? Could 
Vandyck have made a picture of him swaying a ferula 
for a sceptre which would have affected our minds with 



184 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

the same heroic pity, the same compassionaie admitn- 
tion, with which we regard his Belisarius Degging for an 
oholumf Would the moral have heen more graceful, 
more pathetic ? 

The Blind Beggar in the legend — the fattier of pretty- 
Bessy — whose story doggerel rhymes and aienouse signs 
Gannot so degrade or attenuate, but that some sparks of 
a lustrous spirit will sliine through the disguisements — 
this noble Earl of Cornwall (as indeed he was), and mem- 
orable sport of fortune, fleeing from the unjust sentence 
of his liege lord, stripped of all, and seated on the flower- 
ing green of Bethnal, with his more fresli and springing 
daughter by his side, illumining his rags and his beg- 
gary—would the child and parent have cut a better 
figure, doing the honors of a counter, or expiating their 
fallen condition upon the three-foot eminence of some 
sempstering shop-board ? 

In tale or history, your beggar is ever the just an- 
tipode to your king.' The poets and romancical writers 
(as dear Margaret Newcastle would call them), when 
they would most sharply and feelingly paint a reverse 
of fortune, never stop till they have brought down 
their hero in good earnest to rags and the wallet. 
The depth of the descent illustrates the height he 
falls from. There is no medium which can be pre- 
sented to the imagination without offense. There 
is no breaking the fall. Lear, thrown from his palace, 
must divest him of his garments, till he answer "mere 
nature ; " and Oresseid, fallen from a prince's love, must 
extend her pale arms, pale with other whiteness than of 
beauty, supplicating lazar alms with bell and clap-dish. 

The Lucian wits knew this very well; and, with a 
converse policy, when they would express scorn of great- 



COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS. l85 

ness without the pitj, they show us an Alexander in the / 
shades cobbling shoes, or a Semiramis getting up foul ' 
linen. 

How would it sound in song, that a great monarch 
had declined his affections upon the daughter of a baker ! 
yet do we feel the imagination at all violated when we 
read the "true ballad," where King Cophetua woos the 
beggar-maid? 

Pauperism, pauper, poor man, are expressions of pity, 
but pity alloyed with contempt. No one properly con-^- 
temns a beggar. Poverty is a comparative thing, and 
each degree of it is mocked by its "neighbor grice." Its 
poor-rents and comings-in are soon summed up and told. 
Its pretenses to property are almost ludicrous. Its piti- 
ful attempts to save excite a smile. Every scornful com- 
panion can weigh his trifle-bigger purse against it. Poor 
man reproaches poor man in the streets with impolitic 
mention of his condition, his own being a shade better, 
while the rich pass by and jeer at both. No rascally ""l 
comparative insults a Beggar, or thinks of weighing | 
purses with him. He is not in the scale of comparison. ^ 
He is not under the measure of property. He confess- 
edly hath none, any more than a dog or a sheep. No one 
twitteth him with ostentation above his means. No one 
accuses him of pride, or upbraideth him with mock hu- 
mility. None jostle with him for the wall, or pick quar- 
rels for precedency. No wealthy neighbor seeketh to 
eject him from his tenement. No man sues him. No man 
goes to law with him. If I were not the independent 
gentleman that I am, rather than I would be a retainer 
to the great, a led captain, or a poor relation, I would 
chaose, out of the delicacy and true greatness of my 
mind, to be a Beggar. 



186 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A. 

Kags, which are the reproach of poverty, are the 
Beggar's robes, and graceful insignia of his profession, 
/ his tenure, his full dress, the suit in which he is expect- 
ed to show himself in public. He is never out of the 
fashion, or limpeth awkwardly behind it. He is not re- 
quired to put on court mourning. He weareth all colors, 
fearing none. His costume hath undergone less change 
than the Quaker's. He is the only man in the universe 
^^X^nvho is not obliged to study appearances. The ups and 
.jX*"^ downs of the world concern him no longer. He alone 
continueth in one stay. The price of stock or land af- 
fecteth him not. The fluctuations of agricultural or com- 
mercial prosperity touch him not, or at worst but change 
his customers. He is not expected to become bail or sure- 
ty for any one. !N"o man troubleth him with questioning 
his religion or politics. He is the only free man in the 
universe. 

The Mendicants of this great city were so many of 
her sights, her lions. I can no more spare them than I 
could the Cries of London. No corner of a street is 
complete without them. They are as indispensable as 
the Ballad-Singer ; and in their picturesque attire as or- 
namental as the signs of old London. They were the 
standing morals, emblems, mementoes, dial-mottos, the 
epital sermons, the books for children, the salutary 
.check and pauses to the high and rushing tide of greasy 
citizenry— 

—"Look 
Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there." 

Above all, those old blind Tobits that used to line the 
wall of Lincoln's-Inn Garden, before modern fastidious- 
ness had expelled them, casting up their ruined orbs to 



COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS. 18? 

catch a raj of pity, and (if possible) of light, with their 
faithful Dog Guide at their feet— whither are they fled J 
or into what corners, blind as themselves, have they been 
driven, out of the wholesome air and sun-warmth? im- 
mersed between four walls, in what withering poor 
house do they endure the penalty of double darkness, 
where the chink of the dropped half-penny no more con- 
soles their forlorn bereavement, far from the sound of 
the cheerful and hope-stirring tread of the passenger ? 
Where hang their useless staves? and who will farm 
their dogs? — Have the overseers of St. L — caused them 
to be shot? or were they tied up in sacks, and dropped 
into the Thames, at the suggestion of B— , the mild rec- 
tor of B ? 

Well fare the soul of unfastidious Vincent Bourne, 
most classical, and, at the same time, most English of the 
Latinists! — who has treated of this human and quadru- 
pedal alliance, this dog and man friendship, in the sweet- 
est of his poems, the Epitaphium in Canem, or Dog''s 
Epitaph. Keader, peruse it ; and say, if customary sights, 
which would call up such gentle poetry as this, were of a 
nature to do more harm or good to the moral sense of the 
passengers through the daily thoroughfares of a vaat and 
busy metropolis : 

" Pauperis hie Iri requiesco Lyciscus, herilis, 
Dum vixi, tutela vigil columenque senectse, 
Dux cseco fidus : nee, me ducente, solebat, 
Prsetenso hinc atque hinc baculo, per iniqua locoruia 
Incertam explorare viam ; sed fila secutus, 
Quae dubios regerent, passus, vestigia tuta 
Fixit inoffenso gressu ; gelidumque sedile 
In nudo nactus saxo, qu4 praetereuntium 
Unda frequens cenfluxit, ibi raiserisque tenebras 



188 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

Lamentis, noctemque oculis ploravit obortam, 
Ploravit nee frustra ; obolura dedit alter et alter, 
Queis cord-a et mentem indiderat natura benignam 
. Ad latus interea Jacui sopitus herile, 
^^, Vel mediis vigil in soranis j ad herilia jussa 

Auresque atque animum arrectus, seu frustula am>^ 
Porrexit sociasque dapes, seu longa diei 
Taedia perpessus, reditum sub nocte parabat, 
Hi mores, haec vita fuit, dum fata sinebant, 
Dum neque languebain morbis, nee inerte senectS. ; 
Quae tandem obrepsit, veterique satellite csecum 
Orbavit doninum ; prisci sed gratia f aeti 
Ne tota intereat, longos delecta per annos, 
Exiguum hunc Irus tumulum de cespite fecit, 
Etsi inQpis, non ingratse, munuscula dextrse; 
Carmine signavitque brevi, dominumque canemqur 
Quod memoret, fidumque canem dominumque benif^^un, 

'*Poor Irus' faithful wolf-dog here I lie, 
That wont to tend my old blind master's steps, 
His guide and guard : nor, while my service lasted 
Had he occasion for that staff, with which 
He new goes picking out his path in fear 
Over the highways and crossings ; but would plant- 
Safe in the conduct of my friendly string, 
A firm foot forward still, till he had reached 
His poor seat on some stone, nigh where the tide 
Of passers-by in thickest confluence flowed : 
To whom with loud and passionate laments 
From morn to eve his dark estate he wailed. 
Nor wailed to all in vain : some here and there- 
The well-disposed and good, their pennies gave- 
., I meantime, at his feet obsequious slept ; 
( Not all-asleep m sleep,) but heart and ear 
Pricked up at his least motion ; to receive 



COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS. 189 

At his kind hand my customary crumbs, 

And common portion in his feast of scraps ; 

Or when night warned us homeward, tired and spent 

With our long day and tedious beggary. 

These were my manners, this my way of life, 
Till age and slow disease me overtook. 
And severed from my sightless master's side. 
But lest the grace of so good deeds should die, 
^..^ Through tract of years in mute oblivion lost, •— - - 
This slender tomb of turf hath Irus reared, 
Cheap monument of no ungrudging hand, 
And with short verse inscribed it, to attest, 
In long and lasting union to attest, 
The virtues of the Beggar and his Dog." 

These dim eyes have in vain explored for some 
months past a well-known figure, or part of the figure 
of a man, who used to glide his comely upper half (»ver 
the pavements of London, wheeling along with most in- 
genious celerity upon a machine of wood ; a spectacle to 
natives, to foreigners, and to children. He was of a ro- 
bust m*4ke, with a florid, sailor-like complexion, and hia 
head was bare to the storm and sunshine. He was a 
natural curiosity, a speculation to the scientific, a prodi- 
gy to the simple. The infant would stare at the mighty 
man brought down to his own level. The common crip- 
ple would despise his own pusillanimity, viewing the 
hale stoutness, and hearty heart, of this half-limbed gi- 
ant. Few but must have noticed him ; for the accident, 
which brought him low, took place during the riots of 
1780, and he has been a groundling so long. He seemed 
earth-born, an Antaeus, and to suck in fresh vigor from 
the soil which he neighbored. He was a grand frag- 
ment ; as good as an Elgin marble. The nature, which 



190 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

should have recruited his reft legs and thighs, was not 
lost, but only retired into his upper parts, and he was 
half a Hercules. I heard a tremendous voice thundering 
and growling, as before an earthquake, and casting down 
my ejes, it was this mandrake reviling a steed that had 
started at his portentous appearance. He seemed to 
want but his just stature to have rent the offending quad- 
ruped in shivers. He was as the man-part of a centaur, 
from which the horse-half had been cloven in some dire 
Lapithan controversy. H 3 moved on, as if he could 
have made shift with yet half of the body portion which 
was left him. The os sublime was not wanting ; and he 
threw out yet a jolly countenance upon the heavens. For- 
ty-and-two years had he driven this out-of-door trade, and 
now that his hair is grizzled in the service, but his good 
spirits no way impaired, because he is not content to 
exchange his free air and exercise for the restraints of a 
poor-house, he is expiating his contumacy in one of thos.e 
houses (ironically christened) of Correction. 

Was a daily spectacle like this to be deemed a nui- 
sance, which called for legal interference to remove? or 
not rather a salutary and a touching object, to the pass- 
ers-by in a great city? Among her shows, her museums, 
and supplies for ever-gaping curiosity (and what else but 
an accumulation of sights — endless sights — is a great 
city; or for what else is it desirable?) was there not 
room for one Lusus (not NaturcB^ indeed, but) Acciden- 
tium? "What if, in forty-and-two years' going about, the 
man had scraped together enough to give a portion to 
his child (as the rumor ran), of a few hundreds — whom 
had he injured ? — whom had he imposed upon? The 
contributors had enjoyed their sight for their pennies. 
What if after being exposed all day to the heats, the rains, 



COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGAHS. 191 

and the frosts of heaven — shuffling his ungainly trunk 
along in an elaborate and painful motion — he was ena- 
bled to retire at night to enjoy himself at a club of his 
fellow-cripples over a dish of hot meat and vegetables, 
as the charge was gravely brought against him by a cler- 
gyman deposing before a House of Commons' Commit= 
tee — was tMs^ or was his truly paternal consideration, 
which (if a fact) deserved a statue rather than a whip- 
ping-post, and is inconsistent at least with the exaggera- 
tion of nocturnal orgies which he has been slandered 
with — a reason that he should be deprived of his chosen, 
harmless, nay edifying, way of life, and be committed in 
hoary age for a sturdy vagabond ? — 

There was a Yorick once, whom it would not havo 
shamed to have sate down at the cripples' feast, and to 
have thrown in his benediction, ay, and his mite, too, 
for a companionable symbol. " Age, thou bast lost thy 
breed." — 

Half of these stories about the prodigious fortunes 
made by begging are (I verily believe) misers' calumnies. 
One was much talked of in the public papers some time 
since, and the usual charitable inferences deduced. A 
clerk in the Bank was surprised with the announcement 
of a five-hundred-pound legacy left him by a person 
whose name he was a stranger to. It seems that in his 
daily morning walks from Peckham (or some villag© 
thereabouts), where he lived, to his ofiice, it had been hia 
practice for the last twenty years to drop his halfpenny 
duly into the hat of some blind Bartimeus, that sate beg- 
ging alms by the wayside in the Borough. The good 
old beggar recognized his daily benefactor by the voice 
only; and, when he died, left all the amassings of hia 
alms (that had been half a century, perhaps, in the. accu- 



10^ THE ESSAYS OF ELlA. 

mulating) to his old Bank friend. Was this a story to 
purse up people's hearts, and pennies, against giving an 
alms to the blind? — or not rather a beautiful moral of 
■well-directed charity on the one part, and noble grati- 
tude upon the other. 

I sometimes wish I had been that Bank-clerk. 

I seem to remember a poor, old, grateful kind of 
creature, blinking, and looking up with his no eyes in 
the sun — 

Is it possible I could have steeled my purse against 
him? 

Perhaps I had no small change. 

Reader, do not be frightened at the hard words, im- 
;";c8ition, imposture — give^ and ash no questions. Cast 
thy bread upon the waters. Some have, unawares (like 
this Bank-clerk), entertained angels. 

Shut not thy purse-strings always against painted dis- 
tress. Act a charity sometimes. When a poor creat- 
ure (outwardly and visibly such) comes before thee, do 
not stay to inquire whether the " seven small children," 
in whose name he implores thy assistance, have a veri- 
table existence, j Rake not into the bowels of unwel- 
come truth, to sjive a halfpenny.^ It is good to believe 
him. If he be not all that he^'^pretendeth, give,, and 
under a personate father of a family, think (if thou 
pleasest) that thou hast relieved an indigent bachelor. 
When they come with their counterfeit looks, and mump- 
ing tones, think them players. You pay j'our money to 
Bee a comedian feign these things, which, concerning 
these poor people, thou canst not certainly teU whether 
they are feigned or not. 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST-PIG. 193 



A DISSEETATION UPON ROAST-PIG, 

Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my 
friend M. was obliging enough to read and explain to 
me, for the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat 
raw, clawing or biting it from the living animal, just 
as they do in Abyssinia to this day. This period is not 
obscurely hinted at by their great Confucius in the sec- 
ond chapter of his " Mundane Mutations," where he des- 
ignates a kind of golden age by the term Cho-fang, lit- 
erally the Cooks' Holiday. The manuscript goes on to 
say that the art of roasting, or rather broiling (which I 
take to be the elder brother) was accidentally discovered 
in the manner following : The swineherd, Tlo-ti, having 
gone out into the woods one morning, as his manner 
was, to collect mast for his hogs, left his cottage in the 
c-are of his eldest son, Bo-bo, a great, lubberly boy, 
who, being fond of playing with fire, as younkers of his 
age commonly are, let some sparks escape into a bundle 
of straw, which, kindling quickly, spread the conflagra- 
tion over every part of their poor mansion, till it was 
reduced to ashes. Together with the cottage (a sorry, 
antediluvian, makeshift of a building, you may think it), 
what was of much more importance, a fine litter of new- 
farrowed pigs, no less than nine in number, perished, 
China pigs have been esteemed a luxury all over the 
East, from the remotest periods that we read of. Bo-bo 
was in the utmost consternation, as you may think, not 
so much for the sake of the tenement, which his father 
and he could easily build up again with a few dry 
branches, and the labor of an hour or two, at any time, 
as for the loss of the pigs. While he was thinking 

13 



194 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

wliat lie should say to his father, and wringing his hands 
over the smoking remnants of one of those untimely 
sufferers, an odor assailed his nostrils, unlike any scent 
which he had before experienced. What could it pro- 
ceed from ? — not from the burned cottage — he had smelt 
that smell before — indeed, this was by no means the first 
accident of the kind which had occurred through the 
negligence of this unlucky young fire-brand. Much less 
did it resemble that of any known herb, weed, or flower. 
A premonitory moistening at the same time overflowed 
his nether lip. He knew not what to think. He next 
stooped down to feel the pig, if there were any signs of 
life in it. He burned his fingers, and to cool them he 
applied them in his booby fashion to his mouth. Some 
of the crumbs of the scorched skin had come away with 
his fingers, and for the first time in his life (in the 
world's life, indeed, for before him no man had known 
it) he tasted — crackling ! Again he felt and fumbled at 
the pig. It did not burn him so much now, still he 
licked his fingers from a sort of habit. The truth at 
length broke into his slow understanding that it was the 
pig that smelt so, and the pig that tasted so delicious ; 
and surrendering himself up to the new-born pleasure, 
he fell to tearing up whole handfuls of the scorched skin 
with the flesh next it, and was cramming it down his 
throat in his beastly fashion, vrhen his sire entered amid 
the smoking rafters, armed with retributory cudgel, and 
inding how affairs stood, began to rain blows upon the 
young rogue's shoulders, as thick as hailstones, which 
Bo-bo heeded not any more than if they had been flies. 
The tickling pleasure, which he experienced in his lower 
regions, had rendered him quite callous to any incon- 
veniences he might feel in those remote quarters. His 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST-PIG. 195 

father might lay on, but he could not beat him from his 
pig, till he had fairly made an end of it, when, becoming 
a little more sensible of his situation, something like, the 
following dialogue ensued : 

" You graceless whelp, what have jou got there de- 
vouring? Is it not enough that you have burned me 
down three houses with your dog's tricks, and be hanged 
to you ! but you must be eating fire, and I know not 
what — what have you got there, I say? " 

" O father, the pig, the pig! do come and taste how 
nice the burnt pig eats ! " 

The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed 
his son, and he cursed himself that ever he should beget 
a son that should eat burnt pig. 

Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened since 
morning, soon raked out another pig, and fairly rending 
it asunder, thrust the lesser half by main force into the 
fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out, "Eat, eat, eat the burnt 
pig, father, only taste — Lord ! " — with such-like bar- 
barous ejaculations, cramming all the while as if he would 
choke. 

Ho-ti trembled every joint while he grasped the 
abominable thing, wavering whether he should not put 
his son to death for an unnatural young monster, when 
the crackling scorching his fingers, as it had done his 
son's, and applying the same remedy to them, he in hi£ 
turn tasted some of its flavor, which, make what sour 
mouths he would for pretense, proved not altogether 
displeasing to him. In conclusion (for the manuscript; 
here is a little tedious) both father and son fairly set 
down to the mess, and never left oif till they had dis- 
patched all that remained of the litter. 

Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret es- 



196^ THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

cape, for the neighbors would certainly have stoned 
them for a couple of abominable wretches, who could 
think of improving upon the good meat which God had 
sent them. l»I"evertheless, strange stories got about. It 
was observed that Ho-ti"'s cottage was burnt down now 
more frequently than ever. Nothing but fires from this 
time forward. Some would break out in broad day, 
others in the night-time. As often as the sow farrowed, 
so sure was the house of Ho-ti to be in a blaze ; and 
Ho-ti himself, which was the more remarkable, instead 
of chastising his son, seemed to grow more indulgent to 
him than ever. At length they were watched, the terri- 
rible mystery discovered, and father and son summoned 
to take their trial at Peking, then an inconsiderable assize 
town. Evidence was given, the obnoxious food itself 
produced in court, and verdict about to be pronounced, 
when the foreman of the jury begged that some of the 
burnt pig, of which the culprits stood accused, might be 
handed into the box. He handled it, and they all han- 
dled it ; and burning their fingers, as Bo-bo and his father 
had done before them, and Nature prompting to each of 
them the same remedy, against the face of all the facts, 
and the clearest charge which judge had ever given — to 
the surprise of the whole court, townsfolk, strangers, 
reporters, and all present — without leaving the box, or 
any manner of consultation whatever, they brought in a 
simultaneous verdict of Not Guilty. 

The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at the 
manifest iniquity of the decision : and when the court 
was dismissed, went privily, and bought up all the pigs 
that could be had for love or money. In a few days his 
Lordship's town-house was observed to be on fire. The 
tiling took wing, and now there was nothing to be seen 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST-PIG. 197 

"but fire in every direction. Fuel and pigs grew enor- 
mously dear all over the district. The insurance-oflaces 
one and all shut up shop. People built slighter and 
slighter every day, until it was feared that the very sci- 
ence of architecture would, in no long time, be lost to 
the world. Thus this custom of firing houses continued, 
till in process of time, says my manuscript, a sage arose, 
like out- Locke, who made a discovery, that the flesh of 
swine, or indeed, of any other animal, might be cooked 
Q)urnt^ as they called it) without the necessity of con- 
suming a whole house to dress it. Then first began the 
rude form of a gridh'on. Roasting by the string or spit 
came in a century or two later, I forget in whose dynasty. 
By such slow degrees, concludes the manuscript, do the 
most useful, and seemingly the most obvious arts, make 
their way among mankind. — 

Without placing too implicit faith in the account 
above given, it must be agreed that, if a worthy pretext 
for so dangerous an experiment as setting houses on fire 
(especially in these days) could be assigned in favor of 
any culinary object, that pretext and excuse might be 
found in eoast-pig. 

Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edibilis^ I 
will maintain it to be the most ^QlicoXQ—princeps olso- 
niorum. 

I speak not of your grown porkers — things between 
pig and pork — those hobbydehoys — but a young and ten- 
der suckling — under a moon old — guiltless, as yet, of the 
sty — with no original speck of the amor immunditicB, the 
hereditary faihng of the first parent, yet manifest — his 
voice, as yet, not broken, but something between a 
childish treble and. a grumble — the mild forerunner, or 
prceludium of a grunt. 



198 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

He must he roasted. I am not ignorant that onr an- 
cestors ate them seethed, or boiled — but what a sacrifice 
of the exterior tegument ! 

There is no flavor comparable, I will contend, to that 
of the crisp, tawnj, well-watched, not over-roasted, 
cracMing, as it is well called — the very teeth are invited 
to their share of the pleasure at this banquet in over- 
coming the coy, brittle resistance — vvith the adhesiv<e 
oleaginous— oh, call it not fat ! but an indefinable sweet- 
ness growing up to it — the tender blossoming of fat — 
fat cropped in the bud — taken in the shoot — in the first 
innocence — the cream and quintessence of the child-pig's 

yet pure food the lean, no lean, but a kind of animal 

manna— or rather, fat and lean (if it must be so) so 
blended and running into each other, that both together 
make but one ambrosian result, or common substance. 

Behold him, while he is "doing" — it seemeth rather 
a refreshing warmth, than a scorching heat, that he is so 
passive to. How equably he twirleth round the string ! 
— Now he is just done. To see the extreme sensibility 
of that tender age! he hath wept out his pretty eyes- 
radiant jellies — shooting-stars. — 

See him in the dish, his second cradle, how meek ho 
lieth ! — wouldsi thou have had this innocent grow up to 
the grossness and indocility which too often accompany 
maturer swinehood? Ten to one he would have proved 
a glutton, a sloven, an obstinate, disagreeable animal — 
wallowing in all manner of filthy conversation — from 
these sins he is happily snatched away — 

" Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade ; 
Death came with timely care — " 

His memory Is odoriferous — ^no clown curseth, whi> his 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST-PIG. 199 

stomach half rejeoteth, the rank bacon — no coal-heaver 
bolteth him in reeking sausages — he hath a fair sepulchre 
in the grateful stomach of the judicious epicure— and for 
such a tomb might he content to die. 

He is the best of sapors. Pineapple is great. She is, 
indeed, almost too transcendent — a delight, if not sinful, 
yet so like to sinning that really a tender-conscienced 
person would do well to pause — too ravishing for mortal 
taste, she woundeth and excoriateth the lips that approach 
her — like lovers' kisses, she biteth — she is a pleasure bor- 
dering on pain from the fierceness and insanity of her 
relish — but she stoppeth at the palate — she meddleth not 
v.'ith the appetite — and the coarsest hunger might barter 
her consistently for a mutton-chop. 

Pig — let me speak his praise — is no less provocative 
of the appetite, than he is satisfactory to the criticalness 
of the censorious palate. The strong man may batten on 
him, and the weakling refuseth not his mild juices. 

Unlike to mankind's mixed characters, a bundle of 
virtues and vices, inexplicably intertwisted, and not to 
bo unraveled without hazard, he is— good throughout. 
No part of him is better or worse than another. He 
helpeth, as far as his little means extend, all around. 
He is the least envious of banquets. He is all neighbors* 
fare. 

I am one of those who freely and ungrudgingly im- 
part a share of the good things of this life which fall to 
their lot (few as mine are in this kind) to a friend. I 
protest I take as great an interest in my friend's pleas- 
ures, his relishes, and proper satisfactions, as in mine 
own. "Presents," I often say, "endear Absents." 
Hares, pheasants, partridges, snipes, barn-door chickens 
(those "tame villatic fowl"), capons, plovers, brawn, 



200 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

barrels of oysters, I dispense as freely as I receive them, 
I love to taste them, as it were, upon the tongue of my 
friend. But a stop must he put somewhere. One would 
not, like Lear, " give everything." I make my stand 
Bpon pig. Methinks it is an ingratitude to the Giver of 
all good flavors, to extra-domiciliate, or send out of the 
house, slightingly (under pretext of friendship, or I know 
not what), a blessing so particularly adapted, predes- 
tined, I may say, to my individual palate. It argues an 
insensibility. 

I remember a touch of conscience in this kind at 
school. My good old aunt, who never parted from me 
at the end of a holiday without stuffing a sweetmeat, or 
some nice thing, into my pocket, had dismissed me one 
eveniDg with a smoking plum-cake, fresh from the oven. 
In my way to school (it was over London bridge) a gray- 
headed old beggar saluted me (I have no doubt, at this 
time of day, that he was a counterfeit). I had no pence 
to console him with, and in the vanity of self-denial, and 
the very coxcombry of charity, schoolboy-like, I made 
him a present of — tbe whole cake! I walked on a little, 
buoyed up, as one is on such occasions, with a sweet 
soothing of self-satisfaction ; but before I had got to the 
end of the bridge, my better feelings returned, and I 
burst into tears, thinking how ungrateful I had been tc 
Bay good aunt, to go and give her good gift away to r. 
stranger that I had never seen before, and who might be 
a bad man for aught I knew ; and then I thought of the 
pleasure my aunt would be taking in thinking that I — I 
myself, and not another — would eat her nice cake — and 
what should I say to her the next time I saw her — how 
naughty I was to part with her pretty present ! — and the 
»dor of th^^t spicy cake came back upon my recollectiotii. 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAgT-flG. ^01 

and the pleasure and the curiosity I had taken in seeing 
her make it, and her joy when she had sent it to the 
oven, and how disappointed she would feel that I had 
never had a bit of it in my mouth at last — and I blamed 
my impertinent spirit of alms-giving, and out-of-place 
hypocrisy of goodness ; and above all I wished never to 
see the face again of that insidious, good-for-nothing, old 
gray impostor. 

Our ancestors were nice in their method of sacrificing 
these tender victims. We read of pigs whipped to death 
with something of a shock, as we hear of any other obso- 
iete custom. The age of discipline is gone by, or it 
svould be curious to inquire (in a philosophical light 
merely) what effect this process might have toward in- 
fcenerating and dulcifying a substance naturally so mild 
and dulcet as the flesh of young pigs. It looks like re- 
fining a violet. Yet we should be cautious, while we 
condemn the inhumanity, how we censure the wisdom 
of the practice. It might impart a gustoi 

I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the young 
students, when I was at St. Omer's, and maintained with 
much learning and pleasantry on both sides, " Whether, 
supposing that the flavor of a pig who obtained his death 
by whipping (^'per flaggellationein extremam) superadded 
a pleasure upon the palate of a man more intense than 
any possible suffering we cau conceive in the animal, is 
man justified in using that method of putting the animal 
to death ? " I forget the decision. 

His sauce should be considered. Decidedly, a few 
bread-crumbs, done up with his liver and brains, and a 
dash of mild sage. But, banish, dear Mrs. Cook, I be- 
seech you, the whole onion tribe. Barbecue your whole 
hogs to your palate, steep them in shalots, stuff them out 



202 "^HE ESSAYS OF ELU. 

with plantations of the rank and guilty garlic; you can- 
not poison them, or make them stronger than they are — 
but consider, he is a weakling — a flower. 



A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF THE BEHAV- 
IOR OF MARRIED PEOPLE. 

As a single man, I have spent a good deal of my timd 
in noting down the infirmities of "Married People, to con- 
sole myself for those superior pleasures which they tell 
me I have lost by remaining as I am, 

I cannot say that the quarrels of men and their wives 
ever made any great impression upon me, or had much 
tendency to strengthen me in those anti-social resolutions 
which I took up long ago upon more substantial consid- 
erations. What oftenest offends me at the houses of 
married persons where I visit, is an error of quite a dif- 
ferent description — it is that they are too loving. 

Not too loving neither: that does not explain my 
meaning. Besides, why should that offend me? The 
very act of separating themselves from the rest of the 
world, to have the fuller enjoyment of each other's so- 
ciety, implies that they prefer one another to all the 
world. 

But what I complain of is, that they carry this pref- 
erence so undisguisedly, they perk it up in the faces of 
us single people so shamelessly, you cannot be in their 
company a moment without being made to feel, by some 
indirect hint, or open avowal, that you are not the ob- 
ject of this preference. Now there are some things 
which give no offence, while implied or taken for granted 



A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT. 20B 

mere!/; hat expressed, there is much offense in them. 
If a man were to accost the first homelj-featured or 
plain-dressed young w^oman of his acquaintance, and tell 
her bluntly that she was not handsome or rich enough 
for him, and he could not marry her, he would deserve 
to be kicked for his ill manners ; yet no less is implied in 
the fact that, having access and opportunity of putting 
the question to her, he has never yet thought fit to do it. 
The young woman understands this as clearly as if it 
were put into words; but no reasonable young woman 
would think of making this the ground of a quarrel. 
Just as little right have a married couple to tell me by 
speeches, and looks that are scarce less plain than speech- 
es, that I am not the happy man — the lady's choice. It 
is enough that I know I am not; I do not want this 
perpetual reminding. 

The display of superior knowledge or riches may be 
made sufficiently mortifying ; but these admit of a pal- 
liative. The knowledge which is brought out to insult 
me, may accidentally improve me ; and in the rich man's 
houses and pictures— his parks and gardens, I have a tem- 
porary usufruct at least. But the display of married 
happiness'has none of these palliatives; it is throughout 
pure, unrecompensed, unqualified insult. 

Marriage, by its best title, is a monopoly, and not of 
the least invidious sort. It is the cunning of most pos- 
sessors of any exclusive privilege to keep their advan- 
tage as much out of sight as possible, that their less 
favored neighbors, seeing little of the benefit, may the 
less be disposed to question the right. But these mar- 
ried monopolists thrust the most obnoxious part of their 
patent into our faces. 

Nothing is to me more distasteful than that entire 



204 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

complacency and satisfaction which beam in the counte- 
nances of a new-married couple — in that of the ladj, 
particularly : it tells you that her lot is disposed of in 
this world; that you can have no hopes of her. It ia 
true, I have none ; nor wishes either, perhaps ; but this 
is one of those truths which ought, as I said before, to 
b© taken for granted, not expressed. 

The excessive airs which those people give themselves, 
founded on the ignorance of us unmarried people, would 
be more offensive if they were less irrational. We will 
allow them to understand the mysteries belonging to 
their own craft better than we, who have not had the 
happiness to be made free of the company ; but their 
arrogance is not content within these limits. If a single 
person presume to offer his opinion in their presence, 
though upon the most indifferent subject, he is immedi- 
ately silenced as an incompetent person. Nay, a young 
married lady of my acquaintance, who, the best of the 
jest was, had not changed her condition above a fortnight 
before, in a question on which I had the misfortune to 
differ from her, respecting the properest mode of breed- 
ing oysters for the London market, had the assurance to 
ask, with a sneer, how such an old Bachelor as I could 
pretend to know anything about such matters! 

But what I have spoken of hitherto is nothing to the 
airs which these creatures give themselves when they 
come, as they generally do, to have children. When I 
consider how little of a rarity children are — that every 
street and blind-alley swarms with them — that the poor- 
est people commonly have them in most abundance — 
that there are few marriages thot are not blessed with af 
least one of these bargains — how often they turn out ill, 
and defeat the fond hopes of their parents, taking to 



A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT. 205 

vicious courses, whicla end in poverty, disgrace, the gal- 
lows, etc. — I cannot for my life tell what cause for pride 
there can possibly be in having them. If they were 
young phoenixes, indeed, that were born but one in a 
year, there might be a pretext. But when they are so 
common — 

I do not advert to the insolent merit which they as- 
sume with their husbands on these occasions. Let them 
look to that. But why we^ who are not their natural- 
born subjects, should be expected to bring our spices^ 
myrrh, and incense — our tribute and homage of admira- 
tion — I do not see. 

"Like as the arrows in the hand of the giant even so 
are the young children; " so says the excellent office la 
our Prayer-book appointed for the churching of women. 
" Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them ; " 
so say I ; but then don't let him discharge his quiver 
upon us that are weaponless — let them be arrows, but 
not to gall and stick us. I have generally observed that 
these arrows are double-headed ; they have two forks, to 
be sure to hit with one or the otlier. As, for instance, 
where you come into a house which is full of children, 
if you happen to take no notice of them (you are think- 
ing of something else, perhaps, and turn a deaf ear tc 
their innocent caresses), you are set down as untractable, 
morose, a hater of children. On the other hand, if you 
find them more than usually engaging — if you are taken 
with their pretty manners, and set about in earnest to 
romp and play with them, some pretext or other is sure 
to be found for sending them out of the room : they are 
too noisy or boisterous, or Mr. does not like chil- 
dren. With one or other of these forks the arrow is 
sure to hit you. 



'^06 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

I could forgive their jealousy, and dispense witli toy- 
ing witli their brats, if it gives them any pain ; but I 
think it unreasonable to be called upon to love them, 
where I see no occasion — to love a whole family, per- 
haps, eight, nine, or ten, indiscriminately — to love all the 
pretty dears, because children are so engaging ! 

I know there is a proverb, " Love me, love my dog; '• 
that is not always so very practicable, particularly if the 
dog be set upon you to tease you or snap at you in sport. 
But a dog, or a lesser thing — any inanimate substance, as 
a keepsake, a watch, or a ring, a tree, or the place where 
we last parted when my friend went away upon a long 
absence, I can make shift to love, because I love him, 
and anything that reminds me of him ; provided it be in 
its nature indifferent, and apt to receive whatever hue 
fancy can give it. But children have a real character, 
and an essential being of themselves ; they are amiable 
or unamiable per se ; I must love or hate them as I see 
cause for either in their qualities. A child's nature is too 
serious a thing to admit of its being regarded as a mere 
appendage to another being, and to be loved or hated 
accordingly ; they stand with me upon their own stock, 
as much as men and women do. Oh ! but you will say, 
sure it is an attractive age — there is something in the 
tender age of infancy that of itself charms us ! That is 
the very reason why I am more nice about them. I 
know that a sweet child is the sweetest thing in Nature^ 
not even excepting the delicate creatures which bear 
them ; but the prettier the kind of thing is, the more 
desirable it is that it should be pretty of its kind. One 
daisy differs not much from another in glory; but a vio- 
let should look and smell the daintiest. — I was always 
rather ^squeamish in my women and children. 



A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT. 207 

But this is not the worst : one must be admitted into 
their familiarity at least, before they can complain of 
inattention. It implies visits, and some kind of inter- 
course. But if the husband be a man with whom you 
have lived on a friendly footing before marriage — if you 
dii not come in on the wife's side — if you did not sneak 
into the house in her train, but were an old friend in 
fast habits of intimacy before their courtship was so 
much as thought on — look about you — your tenure is 
precarious — before a twelvemonth shall roll over your 
head, you shall find your old friend gradually grow cool 
and altered toward you, and at last seek opportunities of 
breaking with you. I have scarce a married friend of 
my acquaintance, upon whose firm faith I can rely, 
whose friendship did not commence after the 'period of 
Ms marriage. With some limitations, they can endure 
that ; but that the good man should have dared to enter 
into a solemn league of friendship in which they were 
not consulted, though it happened before they knew 
him — before they that are now man and wife ever met — 
this is intolerable to thsm. Every long friendship, every 
old authentic intimacy, must be brought into their office 
to be new stamped with their currency, as a sovereign 
prince calls in the good old money that was coined in 
some reign before he was born or thought of, to be new 
marked and minted with the stamp of his authority, 
before he will let it pass current in the world. You 
may guess what luck generally befalls such a rusty piece 
of metal as T am in these new min tings. 

Innumerable are the ways which they take to in- 
sult and worm you out of their husband's confidence. 
Laughing at all you say with a kind of wonder, as if you 
were a queer kind of fellow that said good things, lut 



208 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

an oddity^ is one of the ways — they have a particular 
kind of stare for the purpose — till at last the husband, 
who used to defer to your judgment, and would pass 
over some excrescences of understanding and manner 
for the sake of a general vein of observation (not quite 
vulgar) which he perceived in you, begins to suspect 
whether you are not altogether a humorist — a fellow 
well enough to have consorted with in his bachelor days, 
but not quite so proper to be introduced to ladies. This 
may be called the staring way ; and is that which has 
oftenest been put in practice against me. 

Then there is the exaggerating way, or the way of 
irony ; that is, where they find you an object of especial 
regard with their husband, who is not so easily to be 
shaken from the lasting attachment founded on esteem 
which he has conceived toward you, by never-qualified 
exaggerations to cry up all that you say or do, till the 
good man, who understands well enough that it is all 
done in compliment to him, grows weary of the debt of 
gratitude which is due to so much candor, and by relax- 
ing a little on his part, and taking down a peg or two 
in his enthusiasm, sinks at length to the kindly level of 
moderate esteem — that " decent affection and compla- 
cent kindness" toward you, where she herself can join 
in sympathy with him without much stretch and vio- 
lence to her sincerity. 

Another way (for the ways they have to accomplish 
so desirable a purpose are infinite) is, with a kind of 
innocent simplicity, continually to mistake what it was 
which first made their husband fond of you. If an es- 
teem for something excellent in your moral character 
was that which riveted the chain which she is to break 
upon any imaginary discovery of a want of poignancy 



A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT. ^09 

in your conversation, she will cry, " I thought, my dear, 

you described your friend, Mr. , as a great wit ? " 

If, on the other hand, it was for some supposed charm 
in your conversation that he first grew to like you, and 
was content for this to overlook some trifling irregular- 
ities in your moral deportment, upon the first notice of 
any of these she as readily exclaims, " This, my dear, la 

your good Mr. ! " One good lady whom I took 

the liberty of expostulating with for not showing me 
quite so much respect as I thought due to her husband's 
old friend, had the candor to confess to me that she had 

often heard Mr. speak of me before marriage, and 

that she had conceived a great desire to be acquainted 
with me, hut that the sight of me had very much disap- 
pointed her expectations ; for from her husband's repre- 
sentations of me. she had formed a notion that she was 
to see a fine, tall, officer-like-looking man (I use her 
very words), the very reverse of which proved to be the 
truth. This was candid ; and I had the civility not to 
ask her in return, how she came to pitch upon a stand- 
ard of personal accomplishments for her husband's 
friends which diff'ered so much from his own : for my 
friend's dimensions as near as possible approximate to 
mine ; he standing five feet five in his shoes, in which I 
have the advantage of him by about half an inch ; and 
he no more than myself exhibiting any indications of a 
martial character in his air or countenance. 

These are some of the mortifications which I have 
encountered in ths absurd attempt to visit at their 
houses. To enumerate tkem all would be a vain endeav- 
or ; I shall therefore just glance at the very common 
impropriety of which married ladies are guilty — of 
treating us as if we were their husbands, and vice verm. 

u 



^10 THE ESSAYS OF EL I A. 

I mean, when they use us with familiarity, and their 
husbands with ceremony. Testacea^ for instance, kept 
me the other night two or three hours beyond my 
usual time of supping, while she was fretting be- 
cause Mr. did not come home till the oysters 

were all spoiled, rather than she would be guilty of the 
impoliteness of touching on^ in his absence. This was 
reversing the point of good manners ; for ceremony is 
an invention to take off the uneasy feeling which we de- 
rive from knowing ourselves to be less the object of love 
and esteem with a fellow-creature than some other per- 
son is. It endeavors to make up, by superior attentions 
in little points, for that invidious preference which it Is 
forced to deny in the greater. Had Testacea kept the 
oysters back for me, and withstood her husband's im- 
portunities to go to supper, she would have acted accord- 
ing to the strict rules of propriety. I know no cere- 
mony that ladies are bound to observe to their husbands, 
beyond the point of a modest behavior and decorum i 
therefore I must protest against the vicarious gluttony 
of Gerasia^ who at her own table sent away a dish of 
Morellas, which I was applying to with great good-wilL 
to her husband at the other end of the table, and recom- 
mended a plate of less extraordinary gooseberries to ray 
unwedded palate in their stead. Neither can I excuse 
the wanton affront of — 

But I am weary of stringing up all my married ac- 
quaintance by Roman denominations. Let them amend 
and change their manners, or I promise to record the 
full-length English of their names, to the terror of all 
Buch desperate offenders in future. 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. ^H 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 

The casual sight of an old play-bill, whicli I picked 
up the other day — I know not by what chance it was 
preserved so long — tempts me to call to mind a few of 
the players who make the principal figure in it. It 
presents the cast of parts in the Twelfth Night, at the 
eld Drury Lane Theatre two-and-thirty years ago. There 
is something very touching in these old remembrances. 
Tliey make us think how we once used to read a play- 
bill — not, as now, peradventure, singling out a favorite 
performer, and casting a negligent eye over the rest ; 
but spelling out every name, down to the very mutes 
and servants of the scene — when it was a matter of no 
small moment to us whether Whitfield or Packer took 
the part of Fabian ; when Benson, and Burton, and 
Phillimore — names of small account — had an importance 
beyond what we can be content to attribute now to the 
time's best actors. " Orsino, by Mr. Barrymore." — 
What a full Shakespearean sound it carries ! how fresh 
to memory arise the image and the manner of the gentle 
actor ! 

Those who have only seen Mrs. Jordan within the 
last ten or fifteen years can have no adequate notion of 
her performances of such parts as Ophelia ; Helena, in 
All's Well that Ends Well ; and Viola in this play. Her 
voice had latterly acquired a coarseness which suited 
well enough with her Nells and Hoydens, but in those 
days it sank, with her steady, melting eye, into the 
heart. Her joyous parts — in which her memory now 
chiefly lives — in her youth were outdone by her plaintive 
ones. There i§ no giving an account how she delivered 



212 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

the disguised story of her love for Orsino. It •wa? no 

set speech, that she had foreseen, so as to weave it into 
an harmonious period, line necessarily following line, to 
make up the music — yet I have heard it so spoken, or 
rather read, not without its grace and heauty — hut, 
when she had declared her sister's history to oe a 
"blank," and that she " never told her love," there was 
a pause, as if the story had ended — and then the image 
of the "worm in the hud" came up as a new sugges- 
tion — and the heightened image of " Patience " still fol- 
lowed after that, as by some growing (and not mechani- 
cal) process, thought springing up after thought, I would 
almost say, as they were watered by her tears. So in 
those fine lines — 

" Write loyal cantos of contemned love — . 
Hollow your name to the reverberate hills " — 

there was no preparation made in the foregoing image 
for that wliich was to follow. She used no rhetoric in 
her passion ; or it was ]!!Tature's own rhetoric, most 
legitimate then, when it seemed altogether without rule 
or law. Mrs. Powel (now Mrs. Eenard), then in the 
pride of her beauty, made an admirable Olivia. She 
was particularly excellent in her unbending scenes in 
conversation with the clown. I have seen some Olivias 
— and those very sensible actresses too — who in these 
interlocutions have seemed to set their wits at the jester, 
and to vie conceits with him in downright emulation. 
But she used him for her sport, like what he was, to tri- 
fle a leisure sentence or two with, and then to be dis- 
missed, and she to be the great lady still. She touched 
the imperious, fantastic humor of the charactei with 
nicety. Her fine, spacious person filled the scene. 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 213 

The part of Malvolio has, in my judgment, been so 
often misunderstood, and the general merits of the actor 
who then played it so unduly appreciated, that I shall 
hope for pardon if I am a little prolix upon these points. 

Of all the actors who flourished in my time — a mel- 
ancholy phrase if taken aright, reader — Bensley had 
most of the SAvell of soul, was greatest in the delivery of 
heroic conceptions, the emotions consequent upon the 
presentment of a great idea to the fancy. He had the 
true poetical enthusiasm — the rarest faculty among play- 
ers. None that I remember possessed even a portion of 
that fine madness which he threw out in Hotspur's fa- 
mous rant about glory, or the transports of the Venetian 
incendiary at the vision of the fired city. His voice 
had the dissonance, and at times the inspiriting effect, 
of the trumpet. His gait was uncouth and stiff, but 
no way embarrassed by affectation ; and the thor- 
ough-bred gentleman was uppermost in every move- 
ment. He seized the moment of passion with greatest 
truth ; like a faithful clock, never striking before the 
time ; never anticipating or leading you to anticipate. 
He was totally destitute of trick and artifice. He 
seemed come upon the stage to do the poet's message 
iimply, and he did it with as genuine fidelity as the nun- 
cios in Homer deliver the errands of the gods. He let 
the passion or the sentiment do its own work without 
prop or bolstering. He would have scorned to mounte- 
bank it ; and betrayed none of that cleverness which is 
the bane of serious acting. For this reason, his lago 
was the only endurable one which I remember to have 
seen. No spectator from his action could divine more 
of his artifice than Othello was supposed to do. His 
confessions in solilo<juj|r alorie put you in possession of 



1314 • THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

the mystery. There were no by-intimations to make 
the audience fancy their own discernment so much 
greater than that of the Moor — who commonly stands 
like a great helpless mark set up for mine ancient, and a 
quantity of barren spectators, to shoot their bolts at„ 
The lago of Bensley did not go to work so grossly„ 
There was a triumphant tone about the character, nat- 
ural to a general consciousness of power ; but none of 
that petty vanity which chuckles and cannot contain it- 
self upon any little successful stroke of its knavery — as 
is common with your small villains and green probation- 
ers in mischief. It did not clap or crow before its time. 
It was not a man setting his wits at a child, and wink- 
ing all the while at other children vrho are mightily 
pleased at being let into the secret ; but a consummate 
villain entrapping a noble nature into toils, against which 
no discernment was available, where the manner was as 
fathomless as the purpose seemed dark, and without mo- 
tive. The part of Malvolio, in the Twelfth Night, was 
performed by Bensley, with a richness and a dignity, 
of which (to judge from some recent castings of that 
character) the very tradition must be worn out from the 
stage. No manager in those days would have dreamed 
of giving it to Mr. Baddeley, or Mr, Parsons : when 
Bensley was occasionally absent from the theatre, John. 
Kemble thought it no derogation to succeed to the part, 
Malvolio is not essentiallj ludicrous. He becomes comio 
but by accident. He is cold, austere, repelling; but dig- 
nified, consistent, and, for what appears, rather of an 
overstretched morality. Maria describes him as a sort of 
Puritan ; and he might have worn his gold chain with 
honor in one of our old Eoand-Head families, in the ser- 
vice of a Lambert or a Lady Fairfax. But his morality 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 215 

and his manners are misplaced in Illyria. lie is op- 
posed to the proper levities of the piece, and falls in the 
unequal conquest. Still his pride, or his gravity (call it 
which you will), is inherent, and native to the man, not 
mock or affected, which latter only are the fit objects to 
sscite laughter. His quality is at the best unlovely, but 
neither buffoon nor contemptible. His bearing is loay, 
a little above his station, but probably not much above 
his deserts. We see no reason why he should not have 
been brave, honorable, accomplished. His careless com- 
mittal of the ring to the ground (which he was com- 
missioned to restore to Oesario), bespeaks a generosity of 
birth and feeling. His dialect on all occasions is that of 
a gentleman, and a man of education. We must not 
confound him with the eternal old, low steward of com- 
edy. He is master of the household to a great prin- 
cess ; a dignity probably conferred upon him for other 
respects than age or length of service. Olivia, at the 
first indication of his supposed madness, declares that 
she " would not have him miscarry for half of her dow- 
ry." Does this look as if the character was meant to 
appear little or insignificant? Once, indeed, she ac- 
cuses him to his face— of what?— of being " sick of self- 
love " — but with a gentleness and considerateness which 
could not have been, if she had not thought that this 
particular infirmity shaded some virtues. His rebuke to 
the knight and his sottish revelers is sensible and spir- 
ited; and when we take into consideration the unpro- 
tected condition of his mistress, and the strict regard 
with which her state of real or dissembled mourning 
would draw the eyes of the world upon her house-af- 
fairs, Malvolio might feel the honor of the family in some 
sort in his keeping ; as it appears not that Olivia had 



216 THE ESSAYS OF ELU. 

any more brothers, or kinsmen, to look to it — for Sir 
Toby had dropped all such nice respects at the buttery- 
hatch. That Malvolio was meant to be represented as 
possessing estimable qualities, the expression of the duke, 
in his anxiety to have him reconciled, almost infers: 
"Pursue him, and entreat him to a peace." Even in his 
abused state of chains and darkness, a sort of greatness 
seems never to desert him. He argues highly and well 
with the supposed Sir Topas, and philosophizes gallantly 
upon his straw.* There must have been some shadow 
of worth about the man; he must have been something 
more than a mere vapor — a thing of straw, or Jack in 
oflBce — before Fabian and Maria could have ventured 
sending him upon a courting-errand to Olivia. There 
was some consonancy (as he would say) in the under- 
taking, or the jest would have been too bold even for 
that house of misrule. 

Bensley, accordingly, threw over the part an air of 
Spanish loftiness. He looked, spake, and moved, like an 
old Castilian. He was starch, spruce, opinionated, but 
his superstructure of pride seemed bottomed upon a 
sense of worth. There was something in it beyond the 
coxcomb. It was big and swelling, but you could not be 
sure that it was hollow. ' You might wish to see it taken 
down, but you felt that it was upon an elevation. He 
was magnificent from the outset ; but when the decent 

* Clown. What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild 
fowl? 

Mai. That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit e 
bird. 

Clown. What thinkest thou of his opinion? 

Mai. I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve of his 
opinion. 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 217 

sobrieties of the character began to give way, and the 
poison of self-love, in his conceit of the countess's affec- 
tion, gradually to work, you would have thought that 
the hero of La Mancha in person stood before you. 
How he went smiling to himself! with what ineffable 
carelessness would he twirl his gold chain! what a 
dream it was ! you were infected with the illusion, and 
did not wish that it should be removed! you had no room 
for laughter ! if an unseasonable reflection of morality 
obtruded itself, it was a deep sense of the pitiable in- 
firmity of man's nature, that can lay him open to such 
frenzies — ^but in truth you rather admired than pitied 
the lunacy while it lasted — you felt that an hour of / 
such mistake was worth an age with the eyes open, v 
Who would not wish to live but for a day in the con- 
ceit of such a lady's love as Olivia? Why, the Duke 
would have given his principality but for a quarter of a 
minute, sleeping or waking, to have been so deluded. 
The man seemed to tread upon air, to taste manna, to 
walk with his head in the clouds, to mate Hyperion. 
Oh ! shake not the castles of his pride — endure yet for a 
season, bright moments of confidence — "stand still, ye 
watches of the element," that Malvolio may be still in 
fancy fair Olivia's lord ! — but fate and retribution say no 
— I hear the mischievous titter of Maria — the witty taunts 
©f Sir Toby — the still more insupportable triumph of the 
foolish knight — the counterfeit Sir Topas is unmasked — - 
and " thus the whirligig of time," as the true clown hath 
it, " brings in his revenges." I confess that I never saw 
the catastrophe of this character, while Bensley played 
it, without a kind of tragic interest. There was good 
foolery too. Few now remember Dodd. What an Ague- 
cheek the stage lost in him! Lovegrove, who came 



218 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

nearest to the old actors, revived the character some few 
seasons ago, and made it suificiently grotesque ; but Dodd 
was it^ as it came out of Nature's hands. It might be 
said to remain in purls naturalibus. In expressing slow- 
ness of appreliension, this iictor surpassed ail others. 
You could see the first dawn of an idea stealing slowly 
over his countenance, climbing up by little and little^ 
with a painful process, till it cleared up at last to the 
fullness of a twilight conception — its highest meridian. 
He seemed to keep back his intellect, as some have had 
the power to retard their pulsation. The balloon takes 
less time in filling, than it took to cover the expansion 
of his broad, moony face over all its quarters with ex- 
pression. A glimmer of understanding would appear in 
a corner of his eye, and for lack of fuel go out again. A 
part of his forehead would catch a little intelligence, and 
be a long time in communicating it to the remainder. 

I am ill at dates, but I think it is now better than 
five-and-twenty years ago, that walking in the gardens 
of Gray's Inn — they were then far finer than they are 
now — the accursed Yerulam Buildings had not en- 
croached upon all the east side of them, cutting out deli- 
cate green crankles, and shouldering away one of two of 
the stately alcoves of the terrace — the survivor stands 
gaping and relationless as if it remembered its brother — 
they are still the best gardens of any of the Inns of Court, 
my beloved Temple not forgotten — have the gravest 
character, their aspect being altogether reverend and 
law-breathing — Bacon has left the impress of his foot 
upon their gravel-walks — taking my afternoon solace 
on a summer day upon the aforesaid terrace, a comely, 
sad personage came toward me, whom, from his grave 
air and deportment, I judged to be one of the old Bench- 



ON ^OME GF THE OLD ACTORS. ^10 

eiw x)L tibe Inn. He had a serious, thouglitful forehead, 
and seemed to be in meditations of mortality. As 1 
have an instinctive awe of old Benchers, I was passing 
him with that sort of subindicative token of respec* 
which one is apt to demonstrate toward a venerable 
stranger, and which rather denotes an inclination to 
greet him, than any positive motion of the body to that 
effect — a species of humility and will-worship which I 
observe, nine times out of ten, rather puzzles than pleases 
the person it is offered to — when the face turning full 
upon me, strangely identified itself with that of Dodd. 
Upon close inspection I was not mistaken. But could 
this sad, thoughtful countenance be the same vacant face 
of folly which I had hailed so often under circumstances 
of gayety ; which I had never seen without a smile, or 
recognized but as the usher of mirth ; that looked out so 
formally flat in Foppington, so frothily pert in Tattle, so 
impotently busy in Backbite ; so blankly divested of all 
meaning, or resolutely expressive of none, in Acres, in 
Fribble, and a thousand agreeable impertinences ? Was 
this the face —full of thought and carefulness — that had 
so often divested itself at will of every trace of either to 
give me diversion, to clear my cloudy face for two or 
three hours at least of its furrows ? Was this the face— = 
manly, sober, intelligent — which I had so often despised, 
made mocks at, made merry with? The remembrance 
of the freedoms which I had taken with it came upon me 
with a reproach of insult. I could have asked it pardon. 
I thought it looked upon me with a sense of injury. 
There is something strange as well as sad in seeing actors 
— your pleasant fellows particularly — subjected to and 
suffering the common lot ; their fortunes, their casuaL 
ties, their deaths, seem to belong to the scene, their ac* 



^^0 THE ESSAYS OF ELlA. 

tions to be amenable to poetic justice only. "We can 
hardly connect them with more awful responsibilities. 
The death of this fine actor took place shortly after this 
meeting. He had quitted the stage some months ; and, 
as I learned afterward, had been in the habit of resorting 
daily to these gardens almost to the day of his decease. 
In these serious walks proliably he was divesting himself 
of many scenic and some real vanities — weaning himself 
from the frivolities of the lesser and the greater theatre 
— doing gentle penance for a life of no very reprehen- 
sible fooleries — taking off by degrees the buffoon mask, 
which he might feel he had worn too long — and rehears- 
ing for a more solemn cast of part. Dying, he " put on 
the weeds of Dominic." * 

If few can remember Dodd, many yet living will not 
easily forget the pleasant creature who in those days 
enacted the part of the Clown to Dodd's Sir Andrew. — 
Eichard, or rather Dicky Suett — for so in his lifetime he 
delighted to be called, and time hath ratified the appel- 
lation — lies buried on the nortli side of the cemetery of 
Holy Paul, to whose service his nonage and tender years 
were dedicated. There are who do yet remember him 
at that period— his pipe clear and harmonious. He would 

* Dodd was a man of reading, and left at his death a choice 
collection of old English literature. I should judge him to have 
been a man of wit. I know one instance of an impromptu which 
no length of study could have bettered. My merry friend, Jem 
White, had seen him one evening in Aguecheek, and recognizing 
Dodd the next day in Fleet' Street, was irresistibly impelled to 
take off his hat and salute him as the identical Knight of the pre- 
ceding evening with a '' Save you, Sir Aoidreiv.^'' Dodd, not at 
all disconcerted at this unusual address from a stranger, with a 
courteous half-rebuking wave of the hand, put him off with sea 
*' Away, FooV^ 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 2^1 

often 9p6«K or his chorister days, when he was " oheruh 
Dicky. '^ 

Wnat clipped 2iis wings, or made it expedient that he 
should change the holy for the profane state ; whether 
he had lost his good voice (his best recommendation to 
that office) like Sir Jotin, with "hallooing and singing of 
anthems; " or whether he was adjudged to lack some- 
thing, even in those early years, of the gravity indis- 
pensable to an occupation which professeth to "com- 
merce with the skies" — 1 could never rightly learn ; but 
we find him, after the probation of a twelvemonth or so, 
reverting to a secular condition, and become one of us. 

I think he was not altogetner of that timber out of 
which cathedral-seats and sounding-boards are hewed. 
But if a glad heart — kind, and therefore glad — be any 
part of sanctity, then might the robe of Motley, with 
which he invested himself with so much humility after 
his deprivation, and which he wore so long with so 
much blameless satisfaction to himself and to the public, 
be accepted for a surplice — his white stole and aide. 

The first fruits of his secularization was an engage- 
ment upon the boards of Old Drury, at which theatre 
he commenced, as I have been told, with adopting the 
manner of Parsons in old men's characters. At the pe- 
riod in which most of us knew him, he was no more an 
imitator than he was in any true sense himself imi- 
table. 

He was the Robin Goodfellow of the stage. He came 
in to trouble all things with a welcome perplexity, him- 
self no whit troubled for the matter. He was known, 
like Puck, by bis note—Ra / Ha! Ha! — sometimes 
deepening to Ho ! Ho ! Ho ! with an irresistible acces- 
sion, derived, perhaps, remotely from his ecclesiastical 



5^^ THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

education, foreign to his prototype of — La! Thou- 
sands of hearts yet respoud to the chuckling La! of 
Dicky Suett, brought back to their remembrance by th^? 
faithful transcript of his friend Mathews's mimicry. 
The "force of nature could no further go." He drolled 
upon the stock of these two syllables richer than the 
ouckoo. 

Care, that troubles all the world, was forgotten iic 
his composition. Had he had but two grains (nay, half 
a graift) of it, he could never have supported hiinseli 
upon those two spider's strings, which served him (i» 
the latter part of his unmixed existence) as legs. A 
doubt or a scruple must have made him totter, a sigh 
have puffed him down ; the weight of a frown had stag- 
gered him, a wrinkle made him lose his balance. But 
on he went, scrambling upon those airy stilts of his, 
with Robin Goodfellow, " thorough brake, thorough 
brier," reckless of a scratched face or a torn doublet. 

Shakespeare foresaw him when he framed his fools 
and jesters. They have all the true Suett stamp, a loose 
and shambling gait, a slippery tongue, this last the ready 
midwife to a without-pain-delivered jest; in worlds light 
as air, venting truths deep as the centre ; with idlest 
rhymes tagging conceit when busiest, singing with Lear 
in the tempest, or Sir Toby at the buttery-hatch. 

Jack Bannister and he had the fortune to be more of 
personal favorites with the town than any actors before 
or after. The difference, I take it, was this : Jack was 
more heloved for his sweet, good-natured, moral pre- 
tensions. Dicky was more lihed for his sweet, good- 
natured, no pretensions at all. Your whole conscience 
stirred with Bannister's performance of Walter in The 
Children in the Wood ; but Dicky seemed like a thin^ 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 223 

lis Shakespeare sajs of Love, too young to know what 
conscience is. He put us into Vesta's days. Evil fled 
before him — not as from Jack, as from an antagonist, 
but because it could not touch him, any more than a 
cannon-ball a fly. He was delivered from the burden 
of that death; and, when death came himself, not in 
metaphor, to fetch Dicky, it is recorded of him by 
Robert Palmer, who kindly watched his exit, that he 
received the last stroke, neither varying his accustomed 
tranquillity, nor tune, wich the simple exclamation, 
worthy to have been recorded in his epitaph — La! 
La ! BoUy ! 

The elder Palmer (of stage-treading celebrity) cora^ 
monly played Sir Toby in those days; but there is h 
solidity of wit in the Jests of that half-Falstaff" which h^ 
did not quite fill out. Ho was as much too showy aL 
Moody (who sometimes took the part) was dry and sot- 
tish. In sock or buskin there was an air of swagge ring- 
gentility about Jack Palmer. He was a gentleman witti 
a slight infusion of the footman. His brother Bob (of 
recenter memory), who was his shadow in everything 
while he lived, and dwindled into less than a shadow 
afterward — was a gentleman with a little stronger infu- 
sion of the latter ingredient ; that was all. It is amazing 
how a little of the more or less makes a difierence in 
these things. When you saw Bobby in the Duke's Ser- 
vant,* you said, "What a pity such a pretty fellow was 
only a servant ! " When you saw Jack figuring in Cap- 
tain Absolute, you thought you could trace his promo- 
tion to some lady of quality who fancied the handsome 
fellow in his top-knot, and had bought him a commission. 
Therefore Jack in Dick Amlet was insuperetWo. 

* High Life Below Staiis, 



824 THE ESSAYS OF ELTAo 

Jack had two voices, both plausible, hypocritical, 
and insinuating ; but his secondary or supplemental 
voice still more decisively histrionic than his common 
one. It was reserved for the spectator ; and the drama- 
i/ispersonm were supposed to know nothing at all about 
it. The lies of Young Wilding and the sentiments in 
Joseph Surface were thus marked out in a sort of italics 
to the audience. This secret correspondence with the 
company before the curtain (which is the bane and death 
of tragedy) has an extremely happy effect in some kinds 
of comedy, in the more highly artificial comedy of Con- 
greve or of Sheridan especially, where the absolute sense 
of reality (so indispensable to scenes of interest) is not 
required, or would rather interfere to diminish your 
pleasure. The fact is, you do not believe in such char- 
acters as Surface — the villain of artificial comedy — even 
while you read or see them. If you did, they would 
shock and not divert you. "When Ben, in Love for 
Love, returns from sea, the following exquisite dialogue 
occurs, at his first meeting with his father: 

Sir Sampson. Thou hast been many a weary league, Ben, 
since I saw thee. 

Ben. Ey, ey, been ! Been far enough, an' that be all. Well, 
father, and how do all at home ? how does brother Dick, and 
brother Val ? 

Sir Sampson. Dick ! body o' me, Dick has been dead these 
two years. I writ you word when you were at Leghorn. 

Ben. Mess, that's true ; Marry, I had forgot. Dick's dead, 
as you say — well, and how ? — I have a many questions to ask 
you. — 

Here is an instance of insensibility which in real life 
would be revolting, or rather in real life could not have 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 235 

coexisted with the warm-hearted temperament of the 
character. But when you read it in the spirit with 
which such playful selections and specious combinations 
rather than strict metaphrases of nature should be taken, 
or when you saw Bannister play it, it neither did, nor 
does, wound the moral sense at all. For what is Ben — 
tlie pleasant sailor which Bannister gives us — but a piece 
of satire — a creation of Congreve's fancy — a dreamy 
combination of all the accidents of a sailor's character — 
his contempt of money — his credulity to women — with 
that necessary estrangement from home which it is just 
within the verge of credibility to suppose might produce 
such an hallucination as is here described ? We never 
think the worse of Ben for it, or feel it as a stain upon 
his character. But when an actor comes, and instead of 
the delightful phantom— the creature dear to half-belief 
— which Bannister exhibited — displays before our eyes 
a downright concretion of a Wapping sailor — a jolly, 
warm-hearted Jack Tar — and nothing else — when in- 
stead of investing it with a delicious confusedness of the 
head, and a veering undirected goodness of purpose — ^he 
gives to it a downright daylight understanding, and a full 
consciousness of its actions; thrusting forward the sensi- 
bilities of the character with a pretense as if it stood 
upon nothing else, and was to be judged by them alone 
— we feel tlie discord of the thing; the scene is dis- 
turbed ; a real man has got in among the dramatis per- 
sonm, and puts them out. We want the sailor turned 
out. We feel that his true place is not behind the cur- 
tain, but in the first or second gallery. 



15 



226 THE ESSAYS OF EUA. 



ON THE AETIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST 
CENTURY. 

The artificial Comedy, or Comedy of manners, is 
quite extinct on our stage. Congreve and Earquliar 
show their heads once in seven years only, to he ex- 
ploded and put down instantly. The times cannot bear 
them. Is it for a few wild speeches, an occasional li- 
cense of dialogue? I think not altogether. The busi- 
ness of their dramatic characters will not stand the 
moral test. We screw everything up to that. Idle gal- 
jantry in a fiction, a dream, the passing pageant of an 
evening, startles us in the same way as the alarming in- 
dications of profligacy in a son or ward in real life should 
startle the parent or guardian. We have no such middle 
emotions as dramatic interests left. We see a stage 
libertine playing his loose pranks of two hours' dura- 
tion, and of no after-consequence, with the severe eyes 
which inspect real vices with their bearings upon two 
worlds. We are spectators to a plot or intrigue (not 
reducible in life to the point of strict morality), and take 
it all for truth. We substitute a real for a dramatic per- 
son, and judge him accordingly. We try hiai in our 
courts, from which there is no appeal to the dramatis 
personce, his peers. We have been spoiled with — not 
sentimental comedy — but a tyrant far more pernicious to 
our pleasures which has succeeded to it, the exclusive 
and all-devouring drama of common life; where the 
moral point is everything; where, instead of the ficti- 
tious half -believed personages of the stage (the phantoms 
of old comedy), we recognize ourselves, our brothers, 



ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF LAST CENTFRY. 22? 

aunts, kinsfolk, allies, patrons, enemies — the same as in 
life — with an interest in what is going on so hearty g-nd 
substantial, that we cannot afford our moral Judgment, 
in its deepest and most vital results, to compromise or 
slumber for a moment. What is there transacting, by no 
modification is made to affect us in any other manner 
than the same events or characters would do in our 
relationships of life. We carry our fireside concerns to 
the theatre with us. We do not go thither, like our an- 
cestors, to escape from the pressure of reality, so much 
as to confirm our experience of it; to make assurance 
double, and take a bond of fate. We must live our toil- 
some lives twice over, as it was the mournful privilege of 
Ulysses to descend twice to the shades. All that neutral 
ground of character, which stood between vice and vir- 
tue ; or which in fact was indifferent to neither, where 
neither properly was called in question; that happy 
breathing-place from the burden of a perpetual moral 
questioning — the sanctuary and quiet Alsatia of hunted 
casuistry — is broken up and disfranchised, as injurious to 
the interests of society. The privileges of the place are 
taken away by law. We dare not dally with images, or 
names, of wrong. We bark like foolish dogs at shadows. 
We dread infection from the scenic representation of dis- 
order, and fear a painted pustule. In our anxiety that 
our morality should not take cold, we wrap it up in a 
great blanket surtout of precaution against the breeze 
and sunshine. 

I confess for myself that (with no great delinquencies 
to answer for) I am glad for a season to take an airing 
beyond the diocese of the strict conscience— not to live 
always in the precincts of the law-courts — but now and 
then, for a dream-while or so, to imagine a world with 



228 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

no meddling restrictions — to get into recesses, whitber 
the hunter cannot follow me: 

— " Secret shades 
Of woody Ida's inmost grove, 
While yet there was no fear of Jovr." 

t come back to my cage and my restraint the fresher and 
fnore healthy for it. I wear my shackles more content- 
edly for having respired the breath of an imaginary free- 
dom. I do no^ know how it is with others, but I feel 
the better always for the perusal of one of Cougreve's — 
nay, why should I not add even of Wjcherley's come- 
dies. I am the gayer at least for it ; and I could never 
connect those sports of a w^itty fancy in any shape with 
any result to be drawn from them to imitation in real 
life. They are a world of themselves almost as much as 
fairy -land. Take one their characters, male or female 
(with few exceptions they are alike), and place it in a 
modern play, and my virtuous indignation shall rise 
against the profligate wretch as warmly as the Oatos of 
the pit could desire ; because in a modern play I am to 
judge of the right and the wrong. The standard of 
police is the measure of political justice. The atmos- 
phere will blight it ; it cannot live here. It has got into 
a moral world, where it has no business, from which it 
must needs fall headlong, as dizzy and incapable of mak- 
ing a stand as a Swedenborgian bad spirit that has wan 
dered unawares into the sphere of one of his Good Men 
or Angels. But in its own world do we feel the creat- 
ure is so very bad ? The Fainalls and the Mirabells, the 
Dorimants and the Lady Touchwoods, in their own 
Bphere, do not offend my moral sense ; in fact thej <Jo 



ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF LAST CENTURY. 229 

not appeal to it at all. They seem engaged in their 
proper element. They break through no laws or con- 
scientious restraints. They know of none. They have 
got oat of Christendom into the land — what shall I call 
it ? — of cuckoldry — the Utopia of gallantry, where pleas- 
ure is duty, and the manners perfect freedom. It is 
altogether a speculative scene of things, which has no 
reference whatever to the world that is. No good per- 
son can be justly offended as a spectator, because no 
good person suffers on the stage. Judged morally, every 
character in these plays — the few exceptions only are 
mistakes — is alike essentially vain and worthless. The 
great art of Oongreve is especially shown in this, that 
he has entirely excluded from his scenes — some little 
generosities in the part of Angelica, perhaps, excepted 
— not only anything like a faultless character, but any 
pretensions to goodness or good feelings whatsoever. 
"Whether he did this designedly or instinctively, the effect 
is as happy as the design (if design) was bold. I used 
to wonder at the strange power which his Way of the 
"World in particular possesses of interesting you all along 
in the pursuits of characters for whom you absolutely 
care nothing — for you neither hate nor love his person- 
ages — and I think it is owing to this very indifference 
for any that you endure the whole. He has spread a 
privation of moral light, I will call it, rather than by 
the ugly name of palpable darkness, over his creations ; 
and his shadows flit before you without distinction or 
preference. Had he introduced a good character, a sin- 
gle gush of moral feeling, a revulsion of the judgmeni to 
actual life and actual duties, the impertinent Goshen 
would have only lighted to the discovery of deformities, 
which now are none, because we think them none. 



230 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

Translated into real life, the characters of his, and his 
friend Wycherley's dramas, are profligates and strum- 
pets — the business of their brief existence the undivided 
pursuit of lawless gallantry. No other spring of action 
or possible motive of conduct is recognized ; principles 
which, universally acted upon, must reduce this frame 
of things to a chaos. But we do them wrong in so 
translating them. No such effects are produced in their 
world. When we are among them we are among a 
chaotic people. We are not to judge them by our usages. 
No reverend institutions are insulted by their proceed- 
ings, for they have none among them. No peace of 
families is violated, for no family ties exist among them. 
No purity of the marriage-bed is stained, for none is 
supposed to have a being. No deep affections are dis- 
quieted, no holy wedlock bands are snapped asunder, for 
affection's depth and wedded faith are not of the growth 
of that soil. There is neither right nor wrong, grati- 
tude or its opposite, claim or duty, paternity or sonship. 
Of what consequence is it to Virtue, or how is she at 
all concerned about it, whether Sir Simon or Dapperwit 
steal away Miss Martha, or who is the father of Lord 
Froth's or Sir Paul Pliant's children. 

The whole is a passing pageant, where we should sit as 
unconcerned at the issues, for life or death, as at a battle 
of the frogs and mice. But, like Don Quixote, we take 
part against the puppets, and quite as impertinently. 
We dare not contemplate an Atlantis, a scheme, out of 
which our coxcombical moral sense is for a little transi- 
tory ease excluded. We have not the courage to imagine 
a state of things for which there is neither reward nor 
punishment. We cling to the painful necessities of 
shame and blame. We would indict our verj di'eams. 



ARTIF.GIAL COMEDY OF LAST CENTURY. 281 

Amid the mortifying circumstances attendant upon 
growing old, it is something to have seen the School for 
Scandal in its glory. This comedy grew out of Con- 
greve and Wycherley, but gathered some allays of the 
sentimental comedy which followed theirs. It is im- 
possible that it should be now acted^ though it continueSj 
at long intervals, to be announced in the bills. Its hero, 
when Palmer played it, at least, was Joseph Surface. 
When I remember the gay boldness, the graceful, solemn 
plausibility, the measured step, the insinuating voice- -to 
express it in a word — the downright acted villainy of the 
part, so different from the pressure of conscious actual 
wickedness — the hypocritical assumption of hypocrisy — 
which made Jack so deservedly a favorite in that char- 
acter, I must needs conclude the present generation of 
playgoers more virtuous than myself, or more dense. I 
freely confess that he divided the palm with me with his 
better brother ; that, in fact, I liked him quite as well. 
i!^ot but there are passages — like that, for instance, where 
Joseph is made to refuse a pittance to a poor relation — 
incongruities which Sheridan was forced upon by the at- 
tempt to join the artificial with the sentimental comedy, 
either of which must destroy the other — but over these 
obstructions Jack's manner floated him so lightly that a 
refusal from him no more shocked you than the easy 
compliance of Charles gave you in reality any pleasure : 
you got over the paltry question as quickly as you could, 
to get back into the regions of pure comedy, where no 
cold moral reigns. The highly- artificial manner of Pal- 
mer in this character counteracted every disagreeable 
impression which you might have received from the con- 
trast, supposing them real, between the two brothers. 
Tou did not believe in Joseph with the same faith with 



232 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

which you believed in Charles. The latter was a pleas= 
ant reality, the former a no less pleasant poetical foil to 
it. The comedy, I have said, is incongruous — a mixture 
of Congreve with sentimental incompatibilities ; the gay- 
ety upon the whole is buoyant, but it required the con- 
summate art of Palmer to reconcile the discordant ele 
ments. 

A player with Jack's talents, if we had one now. 
would not dare to do the part in the same manner. He 
would instinctively avoid every turn which might tend 
to unrealize, and so to make the character fascinating. 
He must take his cne from his spectators, who would 
expect a bad man and a good man as rigidly opposed to 
each other as the death-beds of those geniuses are con- 
trasted in the prints, which I am sorry to say have dis- 
appeared from the windows of my old friend Carrington 
Bowles, of St. Paul's Church-yard memory — (an exhi- 
bition as venerable as the adjacent cathedral, and almost 
coeval) of the bad and good man at the hour of death ; 
where the ghastly apprehensions of the former — and 
truly the grim phantom, with his reality of a toastiag- 
fork is not to be despised — so finely contrast with the 
meek, complacent kissing of the rod — taking it in like 
honey and butter — with which the latter submits to the 
scythe of the gentle bleeder, Time, w^io wields his lancet 
with the apprehensive finger of a popular young ladies' 
surgeon. What flesh, like loving grass, would not covet 
to meet half-way the stroke of such a delicate mower? 
John Palmer was twice an actor in this exquisite part. 
He was playing to you all the while that he was playing 
upon Sir Peter and his lady. You had the first intima- 
tion of a sentiment before it was on his lips. His altered 
TOice was meant to you, and you were to suppose that 



ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF LAST CENTURY. 233 

his fictitious co-flutterers on the stage perceived nothing 
at all of it. What was it to you if that half reality, the 
husband, was overreached by the puppetry — or the thin 
thing (Lady Teazle's reputation) was persuaded it was 
dying of a plethory ? The fortunes of Othello and Des- 
demona were not concerned in it. Poor Jack has passed 
from the stage in good time, that he did not live to this 
our age of seriousness. The pleasant old Teazle King^ 
too, is gone in good time. His manner would scarce 
hate passed current in our day. We must love or hate — 
acquit or condemn — censure or pity — exert our detest- 
able coxcombry of moral judgment upon everything. 
Joseph Surface, to go down now, must be a downright 
revolting villain — no compromise — his first appearance 
must shock and give horror — his specious plausibilities, 
which the pleasurable faculties of our fathers welcomed 
with such hearty greetings, knowing that no harm (dra- 
matic harm even) could come or was meant to come, of 
them, must inspire a cold and killing aversion. Charles 
(the real canting person of the scene — for the hypocrisy 
of Joseph has its ulterior legitimate ends, but his broth- 
er's professions of a good heart centre in downright self- 
satisfaction) must be loxied^ and Joseph hated. To balance 
one disagreeable reality with another. Sir Peter Teazle 
must be no longer the comic idea of a fretful old bache- 
lor bridegroom, whose teasings (while King acted it) 
were evidently as much played off at you, as they were 
meant to concern anybody on the stage — he must be a 
real person, capable in law of sustaining an injury — a 
person toward whom duties are to be acknowledged — 
the genuine crim,. con. antagonist of the villainous se- 
ducer Joseph. To realize him more, his sufierings under 
his unfortunate match must have the downright pun- 



234 THE ESSAYS OE ELlA. 

gency of life — must (or sLould) make you not mirth- 
ful but uncomfortable, just as the same predicament 
would move you in a neighbor or old friend. Tlie de- 
licious scenes which give the play its name and zest, 
must affect you in the same serious manner as if you 
heard the reputation of a dear female friend attacked m 
your real presence. Crabtree and Sir Benjamin — those 
poor snakes that live but in the sunshine of your mirth — 
must be ripened by this hot-bed process of realization 
Into asps or amphisbsenas ; and Mrs. Candor — O ! fright- 
ful! — become a hooded serpent. Oh! who that remem- 
bers Parsons and Dodd — the wasp and butterfly of the 
School for Scandal — in those two characters ; and charm- 
ing natural Miss Pope, the perfect gentlewoman, as dis- 
tifiguished from the fine lady of comedy, in this latter 
part — would forego the true scenic delight — the esciape 
from life — the oblivion of consequences — the holiday 
barring out of the pedant Keflection — those Saturnalia 
of two or three brief hours, weU won from the world — 
to sit instead at one of our modern plays — to have his 
coward conscience (that, forsooth, must not be left for 
a moment) stimulated with perpetual appeals — dulled 
rather, and blunted, as a faculty without repose must 
be — and his moral vanity pampered with images of no- 
tional justice, notional beneficence, lives saved without 
the spectator's risk, and fortunes given away that cost 
the author nothing ? 

No piece was, perhaps, ever so completely cast in all 
its parts as this mcmager's comedy. Miss Farren had 
succeeded to Mrs. Abington in Lady Teazle; and Smith, 
the original Charles, had retired when I first saw it. 
The rest of the characters, with very slight exceptions, 
remained. I remember it was then the fashion to cry 



ARTIPTCIAL COxMEDY OF LAST CENTURY. 235 

down John Kemble, who took the part of Charles after 
Smith; but, I thought, very unjustly. Smith, I fancy, 
was more airy, and took the eye with a certain gayety of 
person. He brought with him no sombre recollections 
of tragedy. He had not to expiate the fault of having 
pleased beforehand in lofty declamation. He had no 
sins of Hamlet or of Eichard to atone for. His failure in 
these parts was a passport to success in one of so oppo- 
site a tendency. But, as far as I could judge, the weighty 
sense of Kemble made up for more personal incapacity 
than he had to answar for. His harshest tones in this 
part came steeped and dulcified in good-humor. He 
made his defects a grace. His exact declamatory man- 
ner, as he mar aged it, only served to convey the points 
of his dialogue with more precision. It seemed to head 
the shafts to carry them deeper. N"ot one of his spar- 
kling sentences was lost. I remember minutely how he 
delivered each in succession, and cannot by any effort 
imagine how any of them could be altered for the better. 
No man could deliver brilliant dialogue — the dialogue of 
Congreve or of Wycherley — because none understood 
it — half so well as John Kemble. His Valentine, in Love 
for Love, was, to my recollection, faultless. He flagged 
sometimes in the intervals of tragic passion. He would 
slumber over the level parts of an heroic character. His 
Macbeth has been known to nod. But he always seemed 
to me to be particularly alive to pointed and witty dia- 
logue. The relaxing levities of tragedy have not been 
touched by any since him — the playful, court-bred spirit 
in which he condescended to the players in Hamlet — the 
sportive relief which he threw into the darker shades of 
Richard — disappeared with him. He had his sluggish 
moods, his torpors — but they were the halting-stones 



2B6 THE ESSAYS OF ELU. 

and resting-place of his tragedy — politic savings, and 
fetches of the hreath — husbandry of the lungs, where 
E'ature pointed him to be an economist — rather, I think, 
than errors of the judgment. They were, at worst, less 
painful than the eternal, tormenting, unappeasable vigi- 
lance — the "lidless dragon-eyes " of present fashionable 
tragedy. 



OIT THE ACTING OF MUKDEN. 

Not many nights ago, I had come home from seeing 
this extraordinary performer in Cockletop; and when I 
retired to my pillow, his whimsical image still stuck by 
me, in a manner as to threaten sleep. In vain I tried to 
divest myself of it, by conjuring up the most opposite 
associations. I resolved to be serious. I raised up the 
gravest topics of life; private misery, public calamity. 
All would not do : 

— " There the antic sate 
Mocking our state " — 

his queer visnomy — his bewildering costume — all th€ 
strange things which he l:ad raked together — his serpen- 
tine rod, swagging about in his pocket — Cleopatra's tear, 
and the rest of his relics — O'Keefe's wild farce, and his 
wilder commentary — till the passion of laughter, like 
grief in excess, relieved itself by its own weight, invit- 
ing the sleep which, in the first instance, it had driven 
away. 

But I was not to escape so easily. No sooner did I 
fall into slumbers, than the same image, only more per* 



ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN. 237 

plexing, assailed me in the shape of dreams. ITot one 
Munden, but five hundred, were dancing before me, like 
the faces which, whether you will or no, come when you 
have been taking opium — all the strange combinations, 
which this strangest of all strange mortals ever shot his 
proper countenance into, from the day he came commis- 
sioned to dry up the tears of the town for the loss of the 
Qow almost forgotten Edwin. O for the power of the 
pencil to have fixed them when I awoke ! A season or 
two since, there was exhibited a Hogarth gallery. I do 
not see why there should not be a Munden gallery. In 
richness and variety, the latter would not fall far short 
of the former. 

There is one face of Farley, one face of Kjiight, one 
(but what a one it is !) of Liston ; but Munden has none 
that you can properly pin down, and call his. When you 
think he has exhausted his battery of looks, in unac- 
countable warfare with your gravity, suddenly he sprouts 
out an entirely new set of features, like Hydra. He ia 
not one, but legion ; not so much a comedian as a com- 
pany. If his name could be multiplied like his counte- 
nance, it might fill a play-bill. He, and he alone, liter- 
ally makes faces; applied to any other person, the phrase 
is a mere figure, denoting certain modifications of the 
human countenance. Out of some invisible wardrobe 
he dips for faces, as his friend Suett used for wigs, and 
fetches them out as easily. I should not be surprised to 
see him some day put out the head of a river-horse ; or 
come forth a pewitt, or lapwing, some feathered meta- 
morphosis. 

I have seen this gifted actor in Sir Christopher Curry 
— in old Dornton — diffuse a glow of sentiment which has 
made the pulse of a crowded theatre beat like that of one 



238 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

man; when he has come in aid of the pulpit, doing good 
to the moral heart of a people, I have seen some faint 
approaches to this sort of excellence in other players. 
But in the grand grotesque of farce, Munden stands out 
as single and unaccompanied as Hogarth. Hogarth, 
strange to tell, had no followers. The school of Munden 
began, and must end, with himself. 

Can any man wonder like him? can any man see 
ghosts like him? or fight with Ms own shadow — " sessa" 
— as he does in that strangely-neglected thing, the Ooh- 
bler of Preston — where his alternations from the Cobbler 
to the Magnifico, and from the Magnifico to the Cobbler, 
keep the brain of the spectator in as wild a ferment 
as if some Arabian Night were being acted before him. 
Who, like him, can throw, or ever attempted to throw, a 
preternatural interest over the commonest daily-life ob- 
jects? A table, or a joint-stool, in his conception, rises 
into a dignity equivalent to Cassiopeia's chair. It is in- 
vested with constellatory importance. You could not 
speak of it with more deference, if it were mounted into 
the firmament. A beggar in the hands of Michael Ange- 
lo, says Fuseli, rose the Patriarch of Poverty. So the 
gusto of Munden antiquates and ennobles what it touches. 
His pots and his ladles are as grand and primal as the 
seething-pots and hooks seen in old prophetic vision. A 
tub of butter, contemplated by him, amounts to a Pla- 
tonic idea. He understands a leg of mutton in its quid- 
dity. He stands wondering, amid the commonplace ma- 
t jrials of life, like primeval man with the sun and stari 
about him. 

THE BND. 



PEEFAOE 



BY A FRIEND OF THE LATE ELIA. 

'^'\iis poor gentleman, who for some months 
past, has been in a declining way, hath at length 
pai'l his final tribute to nature. 

To say the truth, it is time he were gone. 
The humor of the thing, if ever there was much 
in it, was pretty well exhausted ; and a two years' 
and a half existence has been a tolerable duration 
for a phantom. 

I am now at liberty to confess, that much 
which I have heard objected to my late friend's 
writings was well founded. Crude they are, I 
grant you — a sort of unlicked, incondite things — 
villainously pranked in an affected array of an- 
tique modes and phrases. They ]iad not been his 
if they had been other than such ; and better it 
is that a writer should be natural in a seif-pleas- 
ing quaintness, than to affect a naturalness (so 
called) that should be strange to him. Egotisti- 



cal they have been pronounced by some who did 
not know, that what he tells us, as of himself, 
was often true only (historically) of another ; as 
in a former Essay (to save many instances), where 
under the first person (his favorite figure) he 
shadows forth the forlorn estate of a country boy 
placed at a London school, far from his friends 
and connections — in direct opposition to his own 
early history. If it be egotism to imply and 
twine with his own identity the griefs and affec- 
tions of another — making himself many, or re- 
ducing many unto himself — then is the skillful 
novelist, who all along brings in his hero or hero- 
ine speaking of themselves, the greatest egotist of 
all ; who yet has never, therefore, been accused 
of that narrowness. And how shall the intensei 
dramatist escape being faulty, who, doubtless, 
under cover of passion uttered by another, often- 
times gives blameless vent to his most inward 
feelings, and expresses his own story modestly ! 

My late friend was in many respects a singu- 
lar character. Those who did not like him, hated 
him ; and some who once liked him, afterward 
became his bitterest haters. The truth is, he gave 
himself too little concern what he uttered and in 
whose presence. He observed neither time noi 
place, and would e'en out with what came upper- 
most. With the severe religionist he would pass 
for a free-thinker ; while the other faction set 
him down for a bigot, or persuaded themselves 



PREFACE. 5 

that he belied his sentiments. Few understood 
him ; and I am not certain that at all times he 
quite understood himself. He too much affected 
that dangerous figure — irony. He sowed doubtful 
speeches, and reaped plain, unequivocal hatred. 
He would interrupt the gravest discussion with 
some light jest ; and yet, perhaps, not quite irrele- 
vant in ears that could understand it. Your long 
and much talkers hated him. The informal habit 
of his mind, joined to an inveterate impediment 
of speech, forbade him to be an orator ; and he 
seemed determined that no one else should play 
that part when he was present. He was petit and 
ordinary in his person and appearance. I have 
seen him sometimes in what is called good com- 
pany, but where he has been a stranger, sit silent, 
and be suspected for an odd fellow ; till, some 
unlucky occasion provoking it, he would stutter 
out some senseless pun (not altogether senseless, 
perhaps, if rightly taken), which has stamped his 
character for the evening. It was hit or miss 
with him ; but nine times out of ten he contrived 
by this device to send away a whole company his 
enemies. His conceptions rose kindlier than his 
utterance, and his happiest impromptus had the 
appearance of effort. He has been accused of 
trying to be witty, when in truth he was but 
struggling to give his poor thoughts articulation. 
He chose his companions for some individuality 
of character which they manifested. Hence, not 



6 PBEFAGE. 

many persons of science, and few professed liter* 
ati, were of his councils. They were, for the 
most part, persons of an uncertain fortune ; and, 
as to such people commonly nothing is more ob- 
noxious than a gentleman of settled (though mod- 
erate) income, he passed with most of them for a 
great miser. To my knowledge this was a mis= 
take. His intimados, to confess a truth, were in 
the world's eye a ragged regiment. He found 
them floating on the surface of society ; and the 
color, or something else, in the weed pleased him. 
'The burrs stuck to him — but they were good and 
loving burrs for all that. He never greatly cared 
for the society of what are called good people. 
If any of these were scandalized (and offenses 
were sure to arise), he could not help it. When 
he has been remonstrated with for not making 
more concessions to the feelings of good people, 
he would retort by asking, what one point did 
these good people ever concede to him ? He was 
temperate in his meals and diversions, but( always 
kept a little on this side of abstemiousness.^' Only 
in the use of the Indian weed he might be thought 
a little excessive. He took it, he would say, as a 
solvent of speech. Marry-^as the friendly vapor 
ascended, how his prattle would curl up some- 
times with it ! the ligaments which tongue-tied 
him were loosened, and the stammerer proceeded 
a statist ! 

I do not know whether I ought to bemoan or 



PFEFACE. 7 

rejoice that my old friend is departed. His jests 
were beginning to grow obsolete, and his stories 
to be found out. He felt the approaches of age ; 
and, while he pretended to cling to life, you saw 
how slender were the ties left to bind him. Dis= 
coursing with him latterly on this subject, he 
expressed himself with a pettishness which I 
thought unworthy of him. In our walks about 
his suburban retreat (as he called it) at Shackle- 
well, some children belonging to a school of in- 
dustry had met us, and bowed and courtesied, as 
he thought, in an especial manner to Mm. " They 
take me for a visiting governor," he muttered 
earnestly. He had a horror, which he carried to 
a foible, of looking like anything important and 
parochial. He thought that he approached nearer 
to that stamp daily. He had a general aversion 
from being treated like a grave or respectable 
character, and kept a wary eye upon the advances 
of age that should so entitle him. He herded al- 
ways, while it yas possible, with people younger 
than himself. /He did not conform to the march*) 
of time, but was dragged along in the procession. 
His manners lagged behind his years. He was 
too much of the boy-man. The toga virilis never 
sat gracefully on his shoulders. The impressions 
of infancy had burned into him, and he resented 
-the impertinence of manhood. > These were weak- 
nesses ; but such as they were, they are a key to 
explicate some of his writings. 



OnNTEKTS. 



WAGM 

Blaemismore in H ^«aiBE . • . 11 

Poor Relations . , . , ; • . 18 

Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading » 27 

Imperfect Dramatic Iliusion . . • .36 

To THE Shade op Ellis'*on .... 40 

Ellistoniana .0 • • .44 

The Old Margate Hoy • • . • 60 

The Convalescent. • • • . .60 

Captain Jackson . , . . ,66 

The Superannitated Man , • , • .72 

Barbara S . . . , . . 81 

The Tombs in the Abbey . • • • .88 

Amicus Rediyiyus . . • • . 91 

NUGiE CRITIC-ffl , , . , • .97 

Newspapers Thirty-five Years ago. . . 109 

Barrenness op th3 Imaginative Faculty in the Pro- 

9UGTI9IIS op MODEJIN AUT • , ,11$ 



le CONTENTS. 

The Wedding . . . . , .132 

Rejoicings upon the New Year's Coming of Age <. 139 

Old China. ..... c 146 

The Child Angel: a Bream . • • • 158 

Confessions of a Srukkard . i • c 15*7 

Popular Fallacibs • • • « « 168 



THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIAo 



BLAKESMOOR m H SHIRE. 

I DO not know a pleasure more affecting than to 
range at will over the deserted apartments of some fine 
old family mansion. The traces of extinct grandeur 
admit of a better passion than envy ; and contemplations 
on the great and good, whom we fancy in succession to 
have been its inhabitants, weave for us illusions incom- 
patible with the bustle of modern occupancy and vani> 
ties of foolish present aristocracy. The same difference 
of feeling, I thmk, attends us between entering an empty 
and a crowded church. In the latter it is chance but 
some present human frailty — an act of inattention on 
the part of some of the auditory, or a trait of affecta- 
tion, or worse, vainglory on that of the preacher— puts 
us by our best thoughts, disharmonizing the place and 
the occasion. But wouldst thou know the beauty of holi- 
ness ? — go alone on some week-day, borrowing the keys 
of good Master Sexton, traverse the cool aisles of some 
country church — think of the piety that has kneeled 
there — the congregations, old and young, that have 
found consolation there — the meek pastor — the docile 
parishioner — with no disturbing emotions^ no cross 



12 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELU. 

conflicting comparisons — drink in the tranquillity of tlie 
place, till thou thyself become as fixed and motionless 
as the marble effigies that kneel and weep around thee. 

Journeying northward lately, I could not resist going 
some few miles out of my road to look upon the remains 
of an old great house with which I had been impressed 
in this way in infancy. I was apprised that the owner 
of it had lately pulled it down ; still, I had a vague 
notion that it could not all have perished, that so much 
solidity with magnificence could not have been crushed 
all at once into the mere dust and rubbish which I 
found it. 

The work of ruin had proceeded with a swift hand 
indeed, and the demolition of a few weeks had reduced 
It to — an antiquity. 

I was astonished at the indistinction of everything. 
Where had stood the great gates ? What bounded the 
50urtyard ? Whereabout did the out-houses commence ? 
A few bricks only lay as representatives of that which 
was so stately and so spacious. 

Death does not shrink up his human victim at this 
rate. The burnt ashes of a man weigh more in their 
proportion. 

Had I seen these brick- and -mortar knaves at their 
process of destruction, at the plucking of every panel I 
should have felt the varlets at my heart. I should have 
cried out to them to spare a plank at least out of the 
cheerful storeroom, in whose hot window-seat I used 
to sit and read Cowley, with the grass-plot before, and 
the hum and flappings of that one solitary wasp that 
ever haunted it about me — it is in mine ears now, as oft 
as summer returns — or a panel of the yellow-room. 

Whyj every plank and panel of that house for me 



BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE. 13 

bad magic in it. The tapestried bedrooms — tapestry so 
much better than painting — not adorning merely, but 
peopling the wainscots — at which childhood ever and 
anon would steal a look, shifting its coverlid (replaced 
as quickly) to exercise its tender courage in a momen- 
tary eye-encounter with those stern, bright visages star- 
ing reciprocally — all Ovid on the walls, in colors vivider 
than his descriptions. Acteeon in mid sprout, with the 
unappeasable prudery of Diana ; and the still more pro- 
voking and almost culinary coolness of Dan Phoebus, 
eel-fashion, deliberately divesting of Marsyas. 

Then, that haunted room in which old Mrs. Battle 
died — whereinto I have crept, but always in the day- 
time, with a passion of fear, and a sneaking curiosity, 
terror-tainted, to hold communication with the past. — 
How shall they huild it up again ? 

It was an old deserted place, yet not so long deserted 
but that traces of the splendor of past inmates were 
everywhere apparent. Its furniture was still standing 
— even to the tarnished gilt leather battledoors, and 
crumbling feathers of shuttlecocks in the nursery, which 
told that children had once played there. But I was a 
lonely child, and had the range at will of every apart- 
ment, knew every nook and corner, wondered and wor- 
shiped everywhere. 

The solitude of childhood is not so much the mother 
of thought as it is the feeder of love, and silence, and 
admiration. So strange a passion for the place possessed 
ine in those years, that, though there lay — I shame to 
say how few roods distant from the mansion — half hid 
by trees, what I judged some romantic lake, such was 
the spell which bound me to the house, and such my 
carefulness not to pass its strict and proper precincts, 



14 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

that tlie idle waters lay unexplored for me ; and not till 
late in life, curiosity prevailing over elder devotion, I 
xound, to my astonishment, a pretty brawling brook had 
Deen the Lacus Incognitus of my infancy. Variegated 
views, extensive prospects — ana those at no great dis- 
tance from the house — I was told of such — what were 
they to me, being out of the boundarisr of my Eden ? 
So far from a wish to roam, I would have drawn, me- 
thought, still closer the fences of my chosen prison, and 
have been hemmed in by a yet securer cincture of those 
excluding garden walls. I could have exclaimed with 
that garden-loving poet — 

Bind me, ye woodbines, in your twines ; 
Curl me about, ye gadding vines ; 
And oh, so close your circles lace, 
That I may never leave this place ; 
But, lest your fetters prove too weak, 
Ere I your silken bondage break, 
Do you, brambles, chain me too, 
And, courteous briers, nail me through.* 

I was here as in a lonely temple. Snug firesides 
—the low -built roof — parlors ten feet by ten — frugal 
boards, and all the homeliness of home — these were the 
condition of my birth — the wholesome soil which I was 
planted in. Yet, without impeachment to their tend cr- 
est lessons, I am not sorry to have had glances of some- 
thing beyond ; and to have taken, if but a peep, in child' 
hood, at the contrasting accidents of a great fortune. 

To have the feelings of gentility, it is not necessary 
to have been born gentle. The pride of ancestry may 
be had on cheaper terms than to be obliged to an impor- 

* Marvell, on Appleton House, to the Lord Fairfax. 



BLAKESMOOR IN H — -SHIRE. 15 

fcunate race of ancestors ; and the coatless antiquary in his 
unemblazoned cell, revolving the long line of a Mow- 
bray's or De Clifford's pedigree, at those sounding names 
may warm himself into as gay a vanity as these who do 
inherit them. The claims of birth are ideal merely, and 
what herald shall go about to strip me of an idea? Is it 
trenchant to their swords ? can it be hacked off as a spur 
can ? or torn away like a tarnished garter ? 

What else were the families of the great to us? what 
pleasure should we take in their tedious genealogies, or 
their capitulatory hrass monuments? What to us the 
uninterrupted current of their bloods, if our own did 
not answer within us to a cognate and correspondent 
elevation? 

Or wherefore else, O tattered and diminished 'Scutch- 
eon, that hung upon the time-worn walls of thy princely 
stairs, Blakesmooe ! have I in childhood so oft stood 
poring upon thy mystic characters — thy emblematic sup- 
porters, with their prophetic " Resurgam " — till, every 
dreg of peasantry purging off, I received into myself 
Very Gentility ? Thou wert first in my morning eyes ; 
and of nights hast detained my steps from bedward, till 
it was but a step from gazing at thee to dreaming on 
thee. 

This is the only true gentry by adoption ; the veri- 
table change of blood, and not, as empirics have fabled, 
by transfusion. 

Who it was by dying that had earned the splendid 
trophy, I know not, I inquired not ; but its fading rags 
and colors cobweb-stained told that its subject was of 
two centuries back. 

And what if my ancestor at that date was some Damoe- 
tas, feeding flocks, not his own, upon the hills of Lincoln 



16 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

■ — did 1 m less earnest vindicate to myself the family trap- 
pings of this once proad ^gon ? repaying by a back- 
ward triumph the insults he might possibly have heaped 
in his lifetime upon my poor pastoral progenitor. 

If it were presumption so to speculate, the present 
owners of the mansion had least reason to complain^ 
They had long forsaken the old house of their fathers for 
a newer trifle ; and I was left to appropriate to myself 
what images I could pick up, to raise my fancy, or to 
soothe my vanity. 

I was the true descendant of those old W s, and 

not the present family of that name, who had fled the 
old waste places. 

Mine was that gallery of good old family portraits, 
which as I have gone over, giving them in fancy my 
own family name, one — and then another — would seem 
to smile, reaching forward from the canvas, to recognize 
the new relationship ; while the rest looked grave, as it 
seemed, at the vacancy in their dwelling, and thoughts 
of fled posterity. 

That beauty with the cool blue pastoral drapery, and 
a lamb, that hung next the great bay-window — with the 

bright yellow H shire hair, and eye of watchet hue, 

so like my Alice ! — I am persuaded that she was a true 
Elia — Mildred Elia, I take it. From her, and from my 
passion for her — for I first learned love from a picture 
- — Bridget took the hint of those pretty whimsical lines, 
which thou mayest see, if haply thou hast never seen 
them, reader, in the margin. But my Mildred grew not 
old, like the imaginary Helen. 

High-born Helen, round your dwelling 
These twenty years I've paced in vain; 



BLAKESMOOli IN H SHIRE. It 

Haughty beauty, thy lover's duty 
Hath been to glory in his pain. 

High-born Helen, proudly telling 

Stories of thy cold disdain ; 
I starve, I die, now you comply, 

And I no longer can complain. 

These twenty years I've lived on tears, 

Dwelling for ever on a frown ; 
On sighs I've fed, your scorn my bread 5 

I perish now you kind are grown. 

Can I, who loved my beloved 

But for the scorn " was in her eye,'* 

Can I be moved for my beloved 

When she returns me sigh for sigh ? 

In stately pride, by my bedside, 
High-born Helen's portrait hung ; 

Deaf to my praise, my mournful lays 
Are nightly to the portrait sung. 

To that I weep, nor ever sleep, 
Complaining all night long to her ; 

Helen, grown old, no longer cold, 
Said, " You to all men I prefer." 

Mine, too, Blakesmoor, was thy noble Marble Hall, 
with its mosaic pavements, and its Twelve Csesars— - 
stately busts in marble — ranged round, of whose coun- 
tenances, young reader of faces as I was, the frowning 
beauty of Nero, I remember, had most of my wonder ; 
but the mild Galba had my love. There they stood in 
the coldness of death, yet freshness of immortality. 

Mine, too, thy lofty Justice Hall, with its one chair 
of authority, high-backed and wickered, once the terror 
2 



18 i?fiE LAST ESSAYS OF IJLlA. 

of luckless poacher or selt'-l'orgetful maiden, so com- 
mon since that bats have roosted in it. 

Mine, too— whose els'?? — thy costly fruit-garden, with 
its sun-baked southern wall ; the ampler pleasure-garden, 
rising backward from the house in triple terraces, witl 
flower-pots now of palest lead, save that a speck here 
and there, saved f^om the elements, bespake their pris 
tine state to have been gilt and glittering ; the verdant 
quarters backwarder still; and, stretching still beyond, 
in old formality, thy fiery wilderness, the haunt of the 
squirrel and the day-long murmuring wood-pigeon, with 
that antique image in the center, God or Goddess, I wist 
not; but child of Athens or old Rome paid never a sin- 
cerer worship to Pan or to Sylvanus in their native 
groves than I to that fragmental mystery. 

Was it for this that I kissed my childish hands too 
fervently in your idol-worship, walks and windings of 
BL"-kesmoor ! for this, or what sin of mine, has the plow 
passed over your pleasant places? I sometimes tliink 
that as men. when they die, do not die all, so of their 
extinguished habitations there may be a hope — a germ 
to be revivified. 



POOR RELATIONS. 

/ 

/ A rooE RELATION is the most irrelevant thing m 
naturri — a piece of iaipertinent correspondency — an 
odious approximation — a haunting conscience — a pre- 
poHterous shadow, lengthening in the noontide of our 
prosperity — an unwelcome remembrancer-!- a perpetu- 

>ally recurring mortific"atK)DV« drain on your purse — a 



POOR RELATIONS. 19 

more intolerable dun upon your pride — a drawback upon 
success — a rebuke to your rising — a stain in your blood 
— a blot on your 'scutcheon — arent in your garmeiat — a 
death's head at your banquet — Agathocles's pot^a Mor- 
deoai in your gate, a Lazarus at your door — a lion in 
your path — a frog in your chamber — a fly in your oint- 
ment — a mote in your eye — a triumph to your enemy, 
an apology to your friends — the one thing not needful— 
the hail in harvest — the ounce of sour in a pound of 
sweet. 

He is known by his knock. Your heart telleth you, 

"That is Mr. ." A rap between familiarity and 

respect, that demands, and at the same time seems to 
despair of, entertainment. He entereth smiling and — 
embarrassed. He holdeth out his hand to you to shake, 
and— draweth it back again. He casually looketh in 
about dinner-time, when the table is full. He offereth 
to go away, seeing you have company, but is induced to 
stay. He filleth a chair, and your visitor's two children 
are accommodated at a side table. He never cometh 
upon open days, when your wife says, with some com- 
placency, " My dear, perhaps Mr. will drop in to- 
day." He remembereth birth-days, and professeth he 
is fortunate to have stumbled upon one. He declareth 
against fish, the turbot being small, yet suffereth himself 
to be importuned into a slice, against his first resolution. 
He sticketh by the port, yet will be prevailed upon to 
empty the remainder glass of claret, if a stranger press 
it upon him. He is a puzzle to the servants, who are 
fearful of being too obsequious or not civil enough to 
him. The guests think " they have seen him before." 
Every one speculateth upon his condition ; and the most 
part take him to be — a tide-waiter. He calleth you by 



20 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

your Cliristian name, to imply that his other is the same 
as your own. He is too familiar by half, yet you wish 
he had less dittidence. With half the familiarity, he might 
pass for a casual dependent ; with more boldness, he 
would be in no danger of being taken for what he is. 
He is too humble for a friend, yet taketh on him more 
state than befits a client. He is a worse guest than a 
country tenant, inasmuch as he bringeth up no rent ; 
yet 'tis odds, from his garb and demeanor, that your 
guests take him for one. He is asked to make one at 
the whist-table; refuseth on the score of poverty, and — 
resents being left out. "When the company break up, he 
proffereth to go for a coach — and lets the servant go. 
He recollects your grandfather, and will thrust in some 
mean and quite unimportant anecdote of the family. He 
knew it when it was not quite so flourishing as " he is 
blest in seeing it now." He reviveth past situations, to 
institute what he calleth favorable comparisons. With 
a reflecting sort of congratulation, he will inquire the 
price of your furniture ; and insults you with a special 
commendation of your window-curtains. He is of opin- 
ion that the urn is the more elegant shape, but, after all, 
there was something more comfortable about the old 
teakettle — which you must remember. He dare say you 
must find a great convenience in having a carriage of 
your own, and appealeth to your lady if it is not so. In- 
quireth if you have had your arms done on vellum yet ; 
and did not know till lately that such-and-such had been 
the crest of the family. His memory is unseasonable;- 
his compliments perverse; his talk a trouble; his stay 
pertinacious ; and when he goeth away you dismiss his 
chair into a corner, as precipitately as possible, and feel 
fairly rif^ if two nuisances. 



POOR RELATIONS. 21 

There is a worse evil under the sun, and that is — a 
female poor relation. You may do something with the 
other, you may pass him off tolerably well ; but your 
indigent she-relative is hopeless. " He is an old humor- 
ist," you may say, "and affects to go threadbare. His 
circumstances are better than folks would take them to 
be. You are fond of having a character at your table, 
and truly he is one." But in the ip^lications of female 
i poverty there can be no disguise, t No woman dresses 
I below herself from caprice. The truth must out with- 

^out shuffling^ "She is plainly related to the L s; 

•r what does she at their house ? " She is, in all proba- 
bihty, your wife's cousin. Mne times out of ten, at 
least, this is the case. Her garb is something between 
a gentlewoman and a beggar, yet the former evidently 
predominates. She is most provokingly humble, and 
ostentatiously sensible to her inferiority. He may re- 
quire to be repressed sometimes — aliquando sujffiaminanr 
dus erat — but there is no raising her. You send her 
soup at dinner, and she begs to be helped after the gen- 
tlemen. Mr. requests the honor of taking wine 

with her. She hesitates between port and madeira, and 
chooses the former — because he does. She calls the ser- 
vant Sir^ and insists on not troubling him to hold her 
plate. The housekeeper patronizes her. The children's 
governess takes upon her to correct her, when she has 
mistaken the piano for harpsichord. 

Eichard Amlet, Esq., in the play, is a notable instance 
of the disadvantages to which this chimerical notion of 
affinity constituting a claim to acquaintance)piay subject 
the spirit of a gentleman. A little foolish blood is all 
that is betwixt him and a lady with a great estate. His 
stars are perpetually crossed by the malignant maternity 



22 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

of an old woman, who persists in calling him " her son 
Dick." But she has wherewithal in the end to recom- 
pense his indignities, and float him again upon the hril- 
liant surface, under which it had been her seeming busi- 
ness and pleasure all along to sink him. All men, besides, 
are not of Dick's temperament. I knew an Amlet in 
real life who, wanting Dick's buoyancy, sank indeed. 

Poor W was of my own standing at Christ's, a line 

classic, and a youth of promise. If he had a blemish, it 
was too much pride ; but its quality was inoffensive ; it 
was not of that sort which hardens the heart, and serves 
to keep inferiors at a distance ; it only sought to ward 
off derogation from itself. It was the principle of self- 
respect, carried as far as it could go, without infringing 
upon that respect which he would have every one else 
equally maintain for himself. He would have you to 
think alike with him on this topic. Many a quarrel have 
I had with him when we were rather older boys, and 
our tallness made us more obnoxious to observation in 
the blue clothes, because I would not thread the alleys 
and blind ways of the town with him to elude notice, 
when we have been out together on a holiday in the 

streets of this sneering and prying metropolis. W 

went, sore with these notions, to Oxford, where the 
dignity and sweetness of a scholar's life, meeting with 
the alloy of a humble introduction, wrought in him a 
passionate devotion to the place, with a profound aver- 
sion from the society. The servitor's gown (worse than 
his school array) clung to him with Nessian venom. 
He thought himself ridiculous in a garb under which 
Latimer must have walked erect, and in which Ifooker, 
in his young days, possibly flaunted in a vein of no dis- 
commendable vanity. In the depth of coUege shades, or 



in Ms lonely chamber, tlie poor student sirti*nl from 
observation. He found shelter among books which in- 
sult not, and studies that ask no questions of a youtli's 
finances. He was lord of his library, and seldom cared 
for looking out beyond his domains. The healing influ- 
ence of studious pursuits was upon him, to soothe and 
to abstract. He was almost a healthy man, when the 
waywardness of his faith broke out against him with a 

second and worse malignity. The father of W had 

hitherto exercised the humble profession of house-painter 

at N , near Oxford. A supposed interest with some 

of the heads of colleges had now induced him to take up 
his abode in that city, with the hope of being employed 
upon some public works which were talked of. From 
that moment I read in the countenance of the young 
man the determination which at length tore him from 
academical pursuits for ever. To a person unacquainted 
with our universities, the distance between the gowns- 
men and the townsmen, as they are called — the trading 
part of the latter especially — is carried to an excess that 
would appear harsh and incredible. The temperament 

of W 's father was diametrically the reverse of his 

own. Old W was a little, busy, cringing tradesman, 

who, with his son upon his arm, would stand bowing 
and scraping, cap in hand, to anything that wore the 
semblance of a gown — insensible to the winks and opener 
remonstrances of the young man, to whose chamber- 
fellow, or equal in standing, perhaps, he was thus ob- 
sequiously and gratuitously ducking. Such a state of 

things could not last. W must change the air of 

Oxford or be suffocated. He chose the former ; and let 
the sturdy moralist, who strains the point of the filiai 
duties as high as they can bear, censure the dereliction ; 



24 THE LAST ESSAYS Of ELIA. 

he can not estimate the struggle. I stood with "W — — , 
the last afternoon I ever saw him, under the eaves of 
his paternal dwelling. It was in the fine lane leading 

from the High Street to the back of College, where 

W kept his rooms. He seemed thoughtful and 

more reconciled. I ventured to rally him — finding him 
in a better mood — upon a representation of the Artist 
Evangelist, which the old man, whose affairs were be- 
ginning to flourish, had caused to be set up in a splendid 
sort of frame over his reallj handsome shop, either as a 
token of prosperity or badge of gratitude to his saint. 

W looked up at the Luke, and, like Satan, " knew 

his mounted sign — and fled." A letter on his father's 
table the next morning announced that he had accepted 
a commission in a regiment about to embark for Portugal. 
He was among the first who perished before the walls 
of St. Sebastian. 

I do not know how, upon a subject which I began 
with treating half seriously, I should have fallen upon a 
recital so eminently painful ; but this theme of poor re- 
lationship is replete with so much matter for tragic as 
well as comic associations, that it is difficult to keep the 
account distinct without blending. The earliest impres- 
sions which I received on this matter are certainly not 
attended with anything painful or very humiliating in 
the recalling. At my father's table (no very splendid 
one) was to be found every Saturday the mysterious fig- 
ure of an aged gentleman, clothed in neat black, of a sad 
yet comely appearance. His deportment was of the 
essence of gravity, his words few or none ; and I was 
not to make a noise in his presence. I had little inclina- 
tion to do so, for my cue was to admire in silence. A 
particular elbow-chair was appropriated to him, which 



POOR RELATIONS. 25 

was in no case to be violated. A peculiar sort of sweet 
pudding, which appeared on no other occasion, distin- 
guished the days of his coming. I used to think him a 
prodigiously rich man. All I could, make out of him 
was, that he and my father had been schoolfellows a 
world ago at Tjincoln, and that he came from the Mint. 
The Mint I knew to be a place where all the money wai? 
coined— and I thought he was the owner of all that 
money. Awful ideas of the Tower twined themselves 
about his presence. He seemed above human infirmi- 
ties and pessions. A sort of melancholy grandeur in- 
vested him. From some inexplicable doom I fancied 
him obliged to go about in an eternal suit of mourning. 
A captive — a stately being, let out of the Tower on Sat- 
urdays. Often have I wondered at the temerity of my 
father, who, in spite of an habitual general respect which 
we all in common manifested toward him, would ven- 
ture now and then to stand up against him in some argu- 
ment touching their youthful days. The houses of the 
ancient city of Lincoln are divided (as most of my read- 
ers know) between the dwellers on the hill and in the 
valley. This marked distinction formed an obvious divi- 
sion between the boys who lived above (however brought 
together in a common school) and the boys whose pater- 
nal residence was on the plain; a sufficient cause of hos 
tility in the code of these young Grotiuses. My father 
had been a leading Mountaineer ; and would still main- 
tain the general superiority in skill and hardihood of 
the Above Boys (his own faction) over the Below Boy» 
(so were they called), of which party his contemporary 
had been a chieftain Many and hot were the skirmishes 
on this topic — the only one upon which the old gentle- 
man was ever brought out — and bad blood bred ; even 



/6 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

sometimes almost to the recommencement (so I expected) 
of actual hostilities. But my father, who scorned to 
insist upon advantages, generally contrived to turn the 
conversation upon some adroit by-comniendation of the 
old minster ; in the general preference of which, before 
all other cathedrals in the island, the dweller on the hill 
and the plain-born could meet on a conciliating i©yel, 
^>and lay down their less important differences. Once 
only I saw the old gentleman really ruffled, and I re- 
membered with anguish the thought that came over me : 
" Perhaps he will never come here again." He had been 
pressed to take another plate of the viand which I have 
already mentioned as the indispensable concomitaBit of 
his visits. He had refused w ith a resistance amounting 
to rigor, when my aunt — an old Lincolnian, but who had 
something of this, in common with my cousin Bridget, 
that she would sometimes press civility out of season 
— uttered the following memorable application : " Do 
take another slice, Mr. Billet, for you do not get pud- 
ding every day." The old gentleman said nothing at 
the time ; but he took occasion in the course of the 
evening, when some argument had intervened between 
them, to utter, with an emphasis which chilled the com- 
pany, and which chills me now as I write it — " Woman, 
you are superannuated ! " John Billet did not survive 
long after the digesting of this affront ; but he survived 
long enough to assure me that peace was actuallj^^ re- 
stored ! and, if I remember aright, another pudding was 
discreetly substituted in the place of that which had 
occasioned the offense. He died at the Mint (anno IV'SI), 
where he had long held what he accounted a comfort- 
able independence ; and, with five pormds fourteen shil- 
lings and a penny, which were found in his escritoire 



DETACHED THOUGHTS. 27 

after his decease, left the world, blessing God that he 
had enough to bury him, and that he had never been 
obliged to any man for a sixpence. This was — a Poor 
Relation. 



DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READ- 

ING. 

To mind the inside of a book is to entertain one's self with 
the forced product of another man's brain. Now, I think a 
man of quality and breeding may be much amused with the 
natural sprouts of his own. — Lord Foppington, in the Relapse. 

An ingenious acquaintance of my own was so much 
struck with this bright sally of his lordship, that he has 
left off reading altogether, to the great improvement of 
his originality. At the hazard of losing some credit on 
this head, I must confess that I dedicate no inconsider- 
able portion of my time to other people's thoughts. I 
dream away my life in others' speculations. I love to 
lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walk- 
ing I am reading. I can not sit and think : books think 
for me. 

I have no repugnances. Shaftesbury is not.too gen- 
teel for me, nor Jonathan Wild too low. I can read 
anything which I call a hooJc. There are things in that 
shape which I can not allow for such. 

In this catalogue of doolcs which are no looTcs — liblia 
a-UUia—l reckon Court Calendars, Directories, Pocket- 
Books (the Literary excepted), Draught-Boards bound 
and lettered on the back, Scientific Treatises, Alma^acs, 



28 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

^ Statutes at Large ; the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robert- 
son, Beattie, Soame Jenyns, and generally all those vol- 
umes which " no gentleman's library should be with- 
out " ; the Histories of Flavius Josephus (that learned 
Jew), and Paley's " Moral Philosophy." With these 
exceptions, I can read almost anything. I bless my stars 

)>for a taste so catholic, so unexcluding. 

I confess that it moves my spleen to see these thingc 
in tooTcs' clothing perched upon shelves, like false saints, 
usurpers of true shrines, intruders into the sanctuary, 
thrusting out the legitimate occupants. To reach down 
a well-bound semblance of a volume, and hope it some 
kind-hearted play-book, then, opening what -' seem its 
leaves," to come bolt upon a withering Population Es- 
say. To expect a Steele, or a Farquhar, and find — Adam 
Smith. To view a well-arranged assortment of block- 
headed Encyclopssdias (Anglicanas or Metropoli tanas) 
set out in an array of Russia or Morocco, when a tithe 
of that good leather would comfortably reclothe my 
shivering folios; would renovate Paracelsus himself, and 
enable old Raymund LuUy — I have them both, reader — 
to look like himself again in the world. I never sec 

^ these impostors, but I long to strip them, to warm my 
ragged veterans in their spoils. 

To be strong-backed and neat-bound is the desidera- 
tum of a volume. Magnificence comes after. This, when 
it can be afiTorded, is not to be lavished upon all kinds of 
books indiscriminately. I would not dress a set of mag- 
azines, for instance, in full suit. The dishabille or half- 
binding (with Russia backs ever) is our costume. A 
Shakespeare or a Milton (unless tlie first editions), it 
were mere foppery to trick out in gay apparel. The 
possession of them confers no distinction. The exterior 



fiE'fACItED TfiOtJGHTB. ^0 

of then, (the things themselves being so common), strange 
to say, raises no sweet emotions, no tickling sense of 
property in the owner. Thomson's " Seasons," again, 
looks beet (I maintain it) a little torn and dog's-eared. 
How beautiful to a genuine lover of reading are the sul- 
lied leaves and worn-out appearance, nay, the very odor 
(beyond Russia), if we would not forget kind feelings 
in fastidiousness, of an old Circulating Library " Tom 
Jones " or •' Vicar of Wakefield " ! How they speak of 
the thousand thumbs that have turned over their pages 
with delight ! — of the lone sempstress, whom they may 
have cheered (milliner, or harder- working mantua-maker) 
after her long day's needle-toil, running far into mid- 
night, when she has snatched an hour, ill spared from 
sleep, to steep her cares, as in some Lethean cup, in 
spelling out their enchanting contents ! Who would 
have them a whit less soiled ? What better condition 
could we desire to see them in ? ^ 

In some respects, the better a book is the less it 
demands from binding. Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, and 
all that class of perpetually self-reproductive volumes — 
Great Nature's Stereotypes — we see them individually 
perish with less regret, because we know the copies of 
them to be '' eterne." But where a book is at once both 
good and rare — where the individual is almost the spe- 
cies, and when that perishes, 

We know not where is that Promethean torch 
That can its light relumine — 

such a book, for instance, as the " Life of the Duke of 
Newcastle," by his Duchess — no casket is rich enough, 
no casing sufficiently durable, to honor and keep safe 
such a jewel. 



go I'HE LAST ^SSAtS OP ELIA. 

Not only rare volumes of this description, wLich 
seem hopeless ever to be reprinted, but old editions of 
writers, such as Sir Philip Sydney, Bishop Taylor, Mil- 
ton in his prose works. Fuller — of whom we have re- 
prints, yet the books themselves, though they go ahout 
and are talked of here and there, we know, have not 
endenizened themselves (nor possibly ever will) in the 
national heart, so as to become stock books — it is good 
to possess these in durable, costly covers. I do not care 
for a First Folio of Shakespeare. You can not make a 
pet book of an author whom everybody reads. I rather 
prefer the common editions of Rowe and Tonson, with- 
out notes, and with plates, which, being so execrably 
bad, serve as maps or modest remembrancers to the text, 
and, without pretending to any supposable emulation 
with it, are so much better than the Shakespeare Gal- 
lery engravings, which did. I have a community of feel- 
ing with my countrymen about his plays, and I like 
those editions of him best which have been oftenest 
tumbled about and handled. On the contrary, I can not 
read Beaumont and Fletcher but in Folio. The Octavo 
editions are painful to look at. I have no sympathy 
with them, nor with Mr. Gifford's Ben Jonson. If they 
were as much read as the current editions of the other 
poet, I should prefer them in that shape to the older 
one. I do not know a more heartless sight than the 
reprint of the " Anatomy of Melancholy." What need 
was there of unearthing the bones of that fantastic old 
great man, to expose them in a .winding-sheet of the 
latest edition to modern censure ? What hapless station- 
er could dream of Burton ever becoming popular ? The 
wretched Malone could not do worse, when he bribed 
the sexton of Stratford church to let him whitewash the 



DETACHED THOUGHTS. 31 

painted effigy of old Shakespeare, which stood there, ir 
rude but lively fashion, depicted to the very color of th^ 
cheek, the eye, the eyebrow, hair, the very dress he used 
to wear — the only authentic testimony we had, however 
imperfect, of these curious parts and parcels of him. 
They covered him over with a coat of white paint. By 

, if I had been a justice of peace for Warwickshire 

I would have clapt both commentator and sexton fast in 
the stocks, for a pair of meddling, sacrilegious varlets. 
I think I see them at their work — these sapient trouble- 
tombs. 

Shall I be thought fantastical if I confess that the 
names of some of our poets sound sweeter and have a 
finer relish to the ear — to mine, at least — than that of 
Milton or of Shakespeare ? It may be that the latter 
are more staled and rung upon in common discourse. 
The sweetest names, and which carry a perfume in the 
mention, are Kit Marlowe, Drayton, Drummond of Haw- 
thornden, and Cowley. 

Much depends upon when and where you read a book. 
In the five or six impatient minutes before the dinner is 
quite ready, who would think of taking up the " Fairy 
Queen" for a stop-gap, or a volume of Bishop Andre wes's 
sermons ? 

Milton almost requires a solemn service of music to 
be played before you enter upon him. But he brings his 
music — to which, who listens, had need bring docile 
thoughts and purged ears. 

Winter evenings — the world shut out — with less of 
ceremony the gentle Shakespeare enters. At such a sea- 
son, the "Tempest," or his own " Winter's Tale." 

These two poets you can not avoid reading aloud — to 
yourself, or (as it chances) to some single person listen- 



33 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

ing. More than one — and it degenerates into an aU" 
dience. 

Books of quick interest, that hurry on for incidents, 
are for the eye to glide over solely. It will not do t© 
read them out. I could never listen to even the better 
kind of modern novels without extreme irksomeness. 

A newspaper read out is intolerable. In some of the 
bank offices it is the custom (to save so much individual 
time) for one of the clerks — who is the best scholar— to 
commence upon the " Times " or the " Chronicle," and 
recite its entire contents aloud, ^ro l)ono publico. With 
every advantage of lungs and elocution, the effect is sin- 
gularly vapid. In barbers' shops and public houses a 
fellow will get up and spell out a paragraph, which he 
comnmnicates as some discovery. Another follows with 
his selection. So the entire journal transpires at length 
by piecemeal. Seldom readers are slow readers, and, 
without this expedient, no one in the company would 
probably ever travel through the contents of a whole 
paper. 

Newspapers always excite curiosity. ISo one ever 
lays one down without a feeling of disappointment. 

What an eternal time that gentleman in black, at 
NanJo's, keeps the paper ! I am sick of hearing the 
waiter bawling out incessantly, " The ' Chronicle ' is in 
hand, sir." 

As in these little diurnals I generally skip the For- 
eign News, the Debates, and the Politics I find the' 
" Morning Herald " by far the most entertaining of them. 
It is an agreeable miscellany rather than a newspaper. 

Coming into an inn at night — having ordered your 
supper — what can be more delightful than to find lying 
in the window-seat, left there time out of mind by the 



DETACHED THOUGHTS. 3^ 

carelessness of some former guest, two or tliree numbers 
of the old "Town and Country Magazine," with its amus- 
ing tete-d-tete pictures — " The Eoyal Lover and Lady 

G ," " The Melting Platonic and the old Beau," and 

such like antiquated scandal ? Would you exchange it — 
at that time and in that place — for a better book ? 

Poor Tobin, who latterly fell blind, did not regret it 
so much for the weightier kinds of reading — the " Para- 
dise Lost " or " Comus " he could have read to him — 
but he missed the pleasure of skimming over with his 
own eye a magazine or a light pamphlet. 

I should not care to be caught in the serious avenues 
of some cathedral alone, and reading " Gandide " I 

I do not remember a more whimsical surprise than 
having been once detected, by a familiar damsel, reclined 
at my ease upon the grass, on Primrose Hill (her Oythe- 
ra), reading "Pamela." There was nothing in the boot 
to make a man seriously ashamed at the exposure ; out 
as she seated herself down by me, and seemed determined 
to read in company, I could have wished it had been — 
any other book. We read on very sociably for a few 
pages ; and, not finding the author much to her taste, 
she got up and went away. Gentle casuist, I leave it to 
thee to conjecture whether the blush (for there was one 
between us) was the property of the nymph or the swain 
in this dilemma. From me you shall never get the secret, 

I am not much a friend to out-of-doors reading. 
I can not settle my spirits to it. I knew a Unitarian 
minister, who was generally to be seen upon Snow Hill 
(as yet Skinner's Street was not) between the hours of 
ten and eleven in the morning, studying a volume of 
Lardner. I own this to have been a strain of abstrac- 
tion beyond my reach. I used to admire how he sidled 
3 



B4 1?HE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

along, keeping clear of secular contacts. An illiterate 
encounter with a porter's knot, or a bread-basket, would 
have quickly put to flight all the theology I am master 
of, and have left me worse than indifferent to the five 
points. 

I was once amused — there is a pleasure in affecting 
affectation — at the indignation of a crowd that was jos- 
tling in with me at the pit-door of Covent Garden Thea- 
tre, to have a sight of Master Betty — then at once in hia 
dawn and his meridian — in " Hamlet." I had been in- 
vited quite unexpectedly to join a party, whom I met 
near the door of the play-house, and I happened to have 
in my hand a large octavo of Johnson and Steevens's 
Shakespeare, which, the time not admitting of my car- 
rying it home, of cours-e went with me to the theatre. 
Just in the very heat and pressure of the doors opening 
— the rush^ as they term it — I deliberately held the vol- 
ume over my head, open at the scene in which the young 
Roscius had been most cried up, and quietly read by 
the lamp-light. The clamor became universal. " The 
affectation of the fellow I " cried one. " Look at that 
gentleman reading^ papa," squeaked a young lady, who 
in her admiration of the novelty almost forgot her fears. 
I read on. " He ought to have his book knocked out of 
his hand," exclaimed a pursy cit, whose arms were toe 
fast pinioned to his side to suffer him to execute his kind 
intention. Still I read on, and, till the time came to pay 
my mcmey, kept as unmoved as St. Anthony at his Holy 
Offices, with satyrs, apes, and hobgoblins mopping and 
making mouths at him in the picture, while the good 
man sits undisturbed at the sight as if he were sole ten- 
ant of the desert. The individual rabble (I recognized 
VHOYQ than one of their ugly faces) had damned a slight 



DETACHED THOUGHTS. 35 

piece of mine but a few nights before, and I was deter- 
mined the culprits should not a second time put me out 
of countenance. 

There is a class of street-readers whom I can never 
contemplate without affection — the poor gentry, who, 
not having wherewithal to buy or hire a book, filch a 
little learning at the open stalls — the owner, with his 
hard eye, casting envious looks at them all the while, 
and thinking when they will have done. Venturing 
tenderly, page after page, expecting every moment when 
he shall interpose his interdict, and yet unable to deny 
themselves the gratification, they " snatch a fearful joy." 

Martin B , in this way, by daily fragments, got 

through two volumes of Clarissa, when the stall-keeper 
damped his laudable ambition by asking him (it was in 
his younger days) whether he meant to purchase the 
work. M. declares that under no circumstance in his 
life did he ever peruse a book with half the satisfaction 
which he took in those uneasy snatches. A quaint poet- 
ess of our day has moralized upon this subject in two 
very touching but homely stanzas : 

THE TWO BOYS. 

I saw a boy with eager eye 

Open a book upon a stall, 

And read as he'd devour it all ; 

Which when the stall-man did espy, 

Soon to the boy I heard him call, 

" You, sir, you never buy a book. 

Therefore in one you shall noc look." 

The boy pass'd slowly on, and with a sigh 

He wish'd he never had been taught to read ; 

Then of the old churl's books he should have had no need. 



36 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

Of suiferings the poor have many, 

Which never can the rich annoy, 

I soon perceived another boy, 

Who looked as if he had not any 

Food — for that day at least — enjoy 

The sight of cold meat in a tavern larder. 

This boy's case, then thought I, is surely harder, 

Thus hungry, longing, thus without a penny, 

Beholding choice of dainty-dressed meat : 

No wonder if he wish he ne'er had learn'd to eat. 



IMPERFECT DRAMATIC ILLUSION. 

A PLAT is said to be well or ill acted, in proportion 
to the scenical illusion produced. Whether such illusion 
can in any case be perfect, is not the question. The 
nearest approach to it, we are told, is when the actor 
appears wholly unconscious of the presence of specta- 
tors. In tragedy — in all which is to affect the feelings 
— this undivided attention to his stage business seemed 
indispensable. Yet it is, in fact, dispensed with every 
day by our cleverest tragedians ; and while these refer- 
ences to an audience, in the shape of rant or sentiment, 
ire not too frequent or palpable, a sufficient quantity of 
illusion for the purposes of dramatic interest may be 
said to be produced in spite of them. But, tragedy 
apart, it may be inquired whether, in certain characters 
in comedy, especially those which are a little extrava- 
gant, or which involve some notion repugnant to the 
moral sense, it is not a proof of the highest skill in 
the comedian when, without absolutely appealing to an 



IMPERFECT DRAMATIC ILLDSION. 37 

audience, he keeps up a tacit understanding with then, 
and makes them, unconsciously to themselves, a party 
m he scene. The utmost nicety is required in the 
mode of doing this; but we speak only'of the grea 
artists m the profession. ^ 

feel m ourselves, or to contemplate in another, is, per- 
haps, cowardice. To see a coward done to tke if n^ 
a stage would produce anything but mirth. Yet we most 
■ of us remember Jack Banister's cowards. Could any. 

ot the actor ,n a perpetual sub-insinuation to us the 
spectators, even in the extremity of the shaking fit, tha. 
he was not half such a coward as we took him for? 
We saw all the common symptoms of the malady upon 
hnn the quivering lip, the cowering knees, the teeth 
chattering; and coald have sworn "thtt man'wasfriS 

a sec. c. to ourselves-that he never once lost his self- 
possessmn ; that he let out by a thousand drol looks 

SlTTn""'.^' ""' ""•' "»' ^' ''" «"PP«-<' ot 
V ible to his fellows in the scene-that his confidence in 

his own resources had never once deserted him. Wa^ 

ne'sl 'T71 "'?" "' ' ""^""'^ ' <"• "<" -*•>- a like- 
.nsteairf „ ' <:'^.^^7'-«^* "-'"^d to paJm upon us 
nstead of an original; while we secretly connived at 
ttiedetaonforthe purpose of greater plLure than a 
more genuine counterfeiting of the imbecility, helpless- 

omlt^ts nf ^'''"^-'^'-' -"-h we know to beTot 

comitants of cowardice in real life, could have given us? 

Why are misers so hateful in the world and so endni- 

ahl. on the stage, but because the skillful actor, by a son 



38 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

of sub-reference rather than direct appeal to us, dis- 
arms the character of a great deal of its odiousness, hj 
seeming to engage our compassion for the insecure tenure 
by which he holds his money-bags and parchments? By 
l;his subtle vent half of the hatefulness of the character 
— the self-closeness with which in real life it coils itself 
up from the sympathies of men — evaporates. The miser 
becomes sympathetic — i. e., is no genuine miser. Here, 
again, a diverting likeness is substituted for a very disa- 
greeable reality. 

Spleen, irritability, the pitiable infirmities of old men, 
which produce only pain to behold in the realities, coun- 
terfeited upon a stage, divert not altogether for the comic 
appendages to them, but in part from an inner conviction 
that they are ieing acted before us ; that a likeness only 
is going on, and not the thing itself. They please by 
being done under the life, or beside it, not to the life. 
When Gattie acts an old man, is he angry indeed ? or 
■only a pleasant counterfeit, just enough of a likeness to 
recognize, without pressing upon us the uneasy sense of 
a reality ? • 

Comedians, paradoxical as it may seem, may be too 
natural. It was the case with a late actor. Nothing 
could be more earnest or trne than the manner of Mr. 
fimery. This told excellently in his Tyke, and charac- 
ters of a tragic cast ; but when he carried the same rigid 
exclusiveness of attention to the stage business, and will- 
ful blindness and oblivion of everything before the cur- 
tain, into his comedy, it produced a harsh and dissonant 
effect. He was out of keeping with the rest of the per- 
soncB dramatis. There was as little link between him and 
them as betwixt himself and the audience. He was a 
third estate, dry^ repulsive, and unsocial to all. Individ- 



1MPERFI3CT DMMATIC illusion. Sfl 

ually considered, his execution was masterly. But com- 
edy is not this unbending thing ; for this reason, that 
the same degree of credibility is not required of it as of 
serious scenes. The degrees of credibility demanded of 
the two things may be illustrated by the different sort 
of truth which we expect when a man tells us a mourn- 
ful or a merry story. If we suspect the former of false- 
hood in any one tittle, we reject it altogether. Our tears 
refuse to flow at a suspected imposition. But the teller 
of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are con- 
tent with less than absolute truth. 'Tis the same with 
dramatic illusion. We confess we love in comedy to see 
an audience naturalized behind the scenes, taken into the 
interest of the drama, welcomed as bystanders, however. 
There is something ungracious in a comic actor holding 
himself aloof from all participation or concern with those 
who are come to be diverted by him. Macbeth must 
see the dagger, and no ear but his own be told of it ; but 
an old fool in farce may think he sees something, and by 
conscious words and looks express it, as plainly as he 
can speak, to pit, box, and gallery. When an imperti- 
nent in tragedy, an Osric, for instance, breaks in upon 
the serious passions of the scene, we approve of the con- 
tempt with which he is treated. But when the pleasant 
impertinent of comedy, in a piece purely meant to give 
delight and raise mirth out of whimsical perplexities, wor- 
ries the studious man with taking up his leisure, or mak- 
ing his house his home, the same sort of contempt ex- 
pressed (however natural) would destroy the balance of 
delight in the spectators. To make the intrusion comic, 
the actor who plays the annoyed man must a little de- 
sert nature ; he must, in short, be thinking of the audi- 
ence, and express only so much dissatisfaction and peev- 



40 THE LAST ESSAYS Ol' fiLIA. 

ishness as is consistent with the pleasure of comedy. In 
other words, his perplexity must seem half put on. If 
he repel the intruder with the sober set face of a man in 
earnest, and more especially if he deliver his expostula- 
tions in a tone which in the world must necessarily pro- 
voke a duel, his real-life manner will destroy the whim- 
sical and purely dramatic existence of the other character 
(which, to render it comic, demands an antagonist comi- 
cality on the part of the character opposed to it), and 
convert what was meant for mirth, rather than belief, 
into a downright piece of impertinence indeed, which 
would raise no diversion in us, but rather stir pain, to 
see inflicted in earnest upon any unworthy person. A 
very judicious actor (in most of his parts) seems to have 
fallen into an error of this sort in his playing with Mr. 
Wrench in the farce of " Free and Easy." 

Many instances would be tedious ; these may suffice 
to show that comic acting at least does not always 
d.emand from the performer that strict abstraction from 
all reference to an audience which is exacted of it ; but 
that in some cases a sort of compromise may take place, 
and all the purposes of dramatic delight be attained by 
a judicious understanding, not too openly announced, 
between the ladies and gentlemen on both sides of the 
curtain. 



TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTO:^". 

JoYOUSEST of once embodied spirits, whither at length 
hast thou flown? to what genial region are we permitted 
to conjecture that thou hast flitted ? 



TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON. 41 

Art thou sowing thj wild oats yet (the harvest- time 
was still to come with thee) upon casual sands of Aver- 
nus ? or art thou enacting Eovee (as we would gladlier 
think) hy wandering Elysian streams ? 

This mortal frame, while thou didst play thy brief 
antics among us, was in truth anything but a prison to 
thee, as the vain Platonist dreams of this l)ody to be no 
better than a county Jail, forsooth, or some house of 
durance vile, whereof the five senses are the fetters. 
Thou knewest better than to be in a hurry to cast off 
those gyves, and hadst notice to quit, I fear, before thou 
wert quite ready to abandon this fleshy tenement. It 
was thy Pleasure-House, thy Palace of Dainty Devicea ; 
thy Louvre, or thy Whitehall. 

What new mysterious lodgings dost thou tenant now ? 
or when may we expect thy aerial house-warming ? 

Tartarus we know, and we have read of the Blessed 
Shades : now can not 1 intelligibly fancy thee in either. 

Is it too much to hazard a conjecture, that (as the 
schoolmen admitted a receptacle apart for Patriarch? 
and unchrisom babes) there may exist — not far perchance 
from that storehouse of all vanities, which Milton saw iB 
vision — a Limbo somewhere for Platees ? and that 

Up thither like aerial vapors fly 

Both all Stage things, and all that m Stage things 

Built their fond hopes of glory or lasting fame ? 

All the unaccomplished works of Authors' hands, 

Abortive, monstrous, or unkindly mixed, 

Damn'd upon earth, fleet thither — 

Play, Opera, Farce, with all their trumpery. 

There, by the neighboring moon (by some not im- 
properly supposed thy Kegent Planet upon earth), mayst 



42 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

thou not still be acting thy managerial pranks, great 
disembodied Lessee, but Lessee still, and still a manager? 

In green-rooms, impervious to mortal eye, the muse 
beholds thee wielding posthumous empire. 

Thin ghosts of Figurantes (never plump on earth) 
circle thee in endlessly, and still their song is '•''Fie on 
sinful Phantasy ! " 

Magnificent were thy capriccios on this globe of 
earth, Robeet William Elliston ! for as yet we know 
not thy new name in heaven. 

It irks me to think that, stripped of thy regalities, 
thou shouldst ferry over, a poor forked shade, in crazy 
Stygian wherry. Methinks I hear the old boatman, 
paddling by the weedy wharf, with raucid voice, bawl- 
ing "Sculls, Sculls" ; to which, with waving hand and 
majestic action, thou deignest not to reply, other than in 
two curt monosyllables, "No; Oars." 

But the laws of Pluto's kingdom know small differ- 
ence between king and cobbler, manager and call-boy ; 
and, if haply your dates of life were conterminent, you 
are quietly taking your passage, cheek by cheek (O igno- 
ble leveling of Death !) with the shade of some recently 
departed candle- snuffer. 

But mercy ! what strippings, what tearing off of his- 
trionic robes and private vanities, what denudations to 
the bone, before the surly Ferryman will admit you to set 
a foot within his battered lighter ! 

Crowns, scepters; shield, sword, and truncheon; 
thy own coronation robes (for thou hast brought the 
whole property-man's wardrobe with thee, enough to 
sink a navy) ; the judge's ermine ; the coxcomb's wig ; 
the snuff-box d la Foppington — all must overboard, he 
positively swears ; and th^t Ancient Mariner brooks no 



TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON. 43 

deniar , ror, since the tiresome monodrame of the old 
Thracian Harper, Charon, it is to be believed, hath 
shown small taste for theatricals. 

Ay, now 'tis done. You are just boat-weight: pura 
et puta anima. 

But, bless me, how little you look ! 

So shall we all look — kings and kaisers — stripped for 
the last voyage. 

But the murky rogue pushes off. Adieu, pleasant, 
and thrice pleasant shade ! with my parting thanks for 
many an hour of life lightened by thy harmless extrava> 
ganzas, public or domestic. 

Rhadamanthus, who tries the lighter causes bsir ,.-, 
leaving to his two brethren the heavy calendars — honest 
Rhadamanth, always partial to players, weighing their 
party-colored existence here upon earth- r^aking account 
of the few foibles that may have sho.ded thy real life^ as 
we call it (though, substantially, cf arcely ..ess a vapor 
than thy idlest vagaries roon ohe ooards or Orury), as 
but of so many echoes, natural repercussions, and results 
to be expected from the assuii'ed extravagancies of thy 
secondary or moch life^ nightly upon a stage — after a 
lenient castigation, with rods lighter than of those Me- 
duseac ringlets, but just enough w " whip the offending 
Adam out of thee," shall courteously dismiss thee at the 
right-hand gate— the O. P. side of Hades— that conducts 
to masques and merrymakings in the Theatre xioyal of 
Proserpine. 

. PLAUDITO, ET VALETO. 



44 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 



ELLISTONIANA. 

My acquaintance with the pleasant creature, wuoee 
loss we all deplore, was but slight. 

My first introduction to E., which afterward ripened 
into an acquaintance a little on this side of intimacy, 
was over a counter in the Leamington Spa Library, then 
newly entered upon by a branch of his family. iG., whom 
nothing misbecame — to auspicate, I suppose, the filial 
concern, and set it agoing with a luster — was serving in 
person two damsels fair, who had come into the shop 
ostensibly to inquire for some new publication, but in 
reality to have a sight of the illustrious shopman, noping 
some conference. With what an air did he reach down 
the volume, dispassionately giving his opinion of the 
worth of the work in question, and launching out into 
a dissertation on its comparative merits witn those of 
certain publications of a similar stamp, its rivals ! his 
enchanted customers fairly hanging on his lips, subdued 
to their authoritative sentence. So have I seen a gen- 
tleman in comedy acting the shopman. So Lovelace sold 
his gloves in King Street. I admired the histrionic art 
by which he contrived to carry clean away every notion 
of disgrace from the occupation he had so generously 
submitted to ; and from that hour I judged him, with no 
after repentance, to be a person with whom it would be 
a felicity to be more acquainted. 

To descant upon his merits as a Comedian would be 
superfluous. "With his blended private and professional 
habits alone I have to do ; that harmonious fusion of the 
planners of the player into those of every-day life, whicli 



ELLISTONIANA. 45 

brought the stage-boards into streets and dining-parlors, 
and kept up the play when the play was ended. 

"I like Wrench," a friend was saying to him one 
day, " because he is the same natural, easy creature on 
the stage that he is off.'''' " My case exactly," retorted 
Elliston — with a charming forgetfulness that the con- 
verse of a proposition does not always lead to the same 
conclusion — "I am the same person o^the stage that I 
am ony The inference, at first sight, seems identical ; 
but examine it a little, and it confesses only that the one 
performer was never, and the other always, acting. 

And in truth this was the charm of Elliston's private 
deportment. You had spirited performance always going 
on before your eyes, with nothing to pay. As where a 
monarch takes up his casual abode for a night, the poor- 
est hovel which he honors by his sleeping in it becomes 
ipso facto for that time a palace ; so wherever Elliston 
walked, sat, or stood still, there was the theatre. He 
carried about with him his pit, boxes, and galleries, and 
set up his portable playhouse at corners of streets and in 
the market-places. Upon flintiest pavements he trod 
the boards still ; and if his theme chanced to be passion- 
ate, the green-baize carpet of tragedy spontaneously rose 
beneath his feet. Now this was hearty, and showed a 
love for his art. So Apelles always painted — in thought. 
So Gr. D. alioays poetizes. I hate a lukewarm artist. I 
have known actors — and some of them of Elliston's own 
stamp ,/lio shall have agreeably been amusing you in 
the part of a rake or a coxcomb through the two or 
three hours of their dramatic existence ; but no sooner 
does the curtain fall with its le;iden clatter, but a spirit 
of lead seems to seize on all their faculties. They emerge 
.:our, morose persons, intolerable to their families, ser- 



46 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELll. 

vants, etc. Another shall have been expanding your 
heart with generous deeds and sentiments, till it even 
beat with yearnings of universal sympathy ; you abso- 
lutely long to go home and do some good action. The 
play seems tedious, till you can get fairly out of the 
house aud realize your laudable intentions. At length 
the final bell rings, and this cordial representative of all 
that is amiable in human breasts steps forth — a miser. 
EUiston was more of a piece. Did he play Ranger, and 
did Eanger fill the general bosom of the town with satis- 
faction ? ^'hy should he not be Ranger, and diffuse the 
same cordial satisfaction among his private circles ? with 
his temperament, his animal spirits, his good nature, his 
follies perchance, could he do better than identify him- 
self with his impersonation ? Are we to like a pleasant 
rake or coxcomb on the stage, and give ourselves airs of 
aversion for the identical character presented to us in 
actual life? or what would the performer have gained 
by divesting himself of the impersonation ? Could the 
man Elliston have been essentially different from his 
part, even if he had avoided to reflect to us studiously, 
in private circles, the airy briskness, the forwardness, 
and scapegoat trickeries of his prototype ? 

"But there is something not natural in this everlast- 
ing acting ; we want the real man." 

Are you quite sure that it is not the man himself, 
whom you can not or will not see, under some adventi- 
tious trappings, which, nevertheless, sit not at all incon- 
sistently upon him? What if it is the nature of some 
men to be highly artificial ? The fault is least reprehen- 
sible in players. Gibber was his own Foppington, with 
almost as much wit as Vanbrugh could add to it. 

" My conceit of his person " — it is Ben Jonson speak- 



ELLISTONIANA. 47 

ing of Lord Bacon — " was never increased toward him 
by his place or honors. But I have, and do reverence 
him for the greatness that was only proper to himself; 
in that he seemed to me ever one of the greatest men 
that had been in many ages. In his adversity I ever 
prayed that Heaven would give him strength ; for great- 
ness he could not want." 

The quality here commended was scarcely less con- 
spicuous in the subject of these idle reminiscences than 
in my Lord Verularn. Those who have imagined that 
an unexpected elevation to the direction of a great Lon- 
don theatre affected the consequence of Elliston, or at 
all changed his nature, knew not the essential greatness 
of the man whom they disparage. It was my fortuno 
to encounter him near St. Dunstan's Church (which, 
with its punctual giants, is now no more than dust and 
a shadow) on the morning of his election to that high 
office. Grasping my hand with a look of significance, 
he only uttered, " Have you heard the news ? " — then, 
with another look following up the blow, he subjoined, 
*' I am the future Manager of Drury Lane Theatre." 
Breathless as he saw me, he stayed not for congratula- 
tion or reply, but mutely stalked away, leaving me to 
chew upon his new-blown dignities at leisure. In fact, 
nothing could be said to it. Expressive silence alone 
could muse his praise. This was in his great style. 

But was he less great (be witness, O ye Powers of 
Equanimity, that supported in the ruins of Carthage the 
consular exile, and more recently transmuted, for a more 
illustrious exile, the barren constableship of Elba into an 
image of Imperial France) when, in melancholy after- 
years, again, much jiear the same spot, I met him, when 
that scepter had been wrested from his hand, and his 



i 



48 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA„ 

dominion was curtailed to the petty managership and 
part proprietorship of the small Olympic, Ms Elba? 
He still played nightly upon the boards of Drury, but in 
parts, alas ! allotted to him, not magniticently distrib- 
uted by him. Waiving his great loss as nothing, and 
magnificently sinking the sense of fallen material gran- 
deur in the more liberal resentment of depreciations 
done to his more lofty intellectual pretensions — " Have 
you heard" (his customary exordium) — "have you heard," 
said he, " how they treat me? they put me in comedy.'''* 
Thought I — but his finger on his lips forbade any verbal 
interruption — " Where could they have put you better ? " 
Then, after a pause — " Where I formerly played Romeo, 
I now play Mercutio." And so again he stalked away, 
neither staying nor caring for responses. 

Oh, it was a rich scene — but Sir A C , the 

best of story-tellers and surgeons, who mends a lame 
narrative almost as well as he sets a fracture, alone could 
do Justice to it — that I was a witness to in the tarnislied 
room (that had once been green) of that same little Olym- 
pic. There, after his deposition from Imperial Drury, 
he substituted a throne. That Olympic Hill was his 
" highest heaven " ; himself " Jove in his chair." There 
he sat in state, while before him, on complaint of prompt- 
er, was brought for judgment — how shall I describe her • 
■ — one of those little tawdry things that flirt at the tails 
of choruses — a probationer for the town, in either of 
its senses — the pertest little drab — a dirty fringe and ap- 
pendage of the lamp's smoke — who, it seems, on some 
disapprobation expressed by a " highly respectable " 
audience, had precipitately quitted her station on the 
boards, and withdrawn her small talents in disgust. 

" And how dare you," said her manager, assuming a 



ELLISTOKIANA. 49 

censorial severity, which would have crushed the confi- 
dence of a Vestris, and disarmed that beautiful Kebel 
herself of her professional caprices — I verily believe he 
thought her standing before him — " how dare you, 
madam, withdraw yourself, without a notice, from your 
theatrical duties?" " I was hissed, sir." "And you 
have the presumption to decide upon the taste of the 
town? " " I don't know that, sir, but I will never stand 
to be hissed," was the sub joinder of young Confidence — 
when, gathering up bis features into one significant mass 
of wonder, pity, and expostulatory iudignation — in a les- 
son never to have been lost upon a creature less forward 
than she who stood before him — liis words were these : 
" They have hissed we." 

'Twas the identical argument a fortiori^ which the 
son of Peleus uses to Lycaon trembling under his lance, 
to persuade him to take his destiny with a good grace : 
*' I, too, am mortal." And it is to be believed that in 
both cases the rhetoric missed of its application, for want 
of a proper understanding with the faculties of the re- 
spective recipients. 

" Quite an Opera pit," he said to me, as he was cour- 
teously conducting me over the benches of his Surrey 
Theatre, the last retreat, and recess, of his every-day 
waning grandeur. 

Those who knew Elliston will know the manner in 
which he pronounced the latter sentence of the few 
iivords I am about to record. One i)roud day to me he 
iook his roast mutton with us in the Temple, to which 1 
had superadded a preliminary haddock. After a rather 
plentiful partaking of the meager banquet, not unrc" 
freshed with the humbler sort of liquors, I made a sort 
of apology for the humility of the fare, observing that 
4 



50 'J'HE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

for my own part I never ate but one dish at dinner. " I, 
too, never eat but one thing at dinner,". was his reply — 
then, after a pause — " reckoning fish as nothing." The 
manner was all. It was as if by one peremptory sen- 
tence he had decreed the annihilation of all the savory 
esculents which the pleasant and nutritious food-giving 
Ocean pours forth upon poor humans from her v^^atery 
bosom. This was greatness^ tempered with considerat* 
tenderness to the feelings of his scanty but welcoming 
entertainer. 

Great wert thou in thy life, Eobert William Elliston, 
and not lessened in thy death, if report speaks truly, 
which says that thou didst direct that thy mortal remains 
should repose under no inscription but one of pure La- 
tinity. Classical was thy bringing up ; and beautiful 
was the feeling on thy last bed, which, connecting the 
man with the boy, took thee back, in thy latest exercise 
of imagination, to the days when, undreaming of Thea- 
tres and Managerships, thou wert a scholar, and an early 
ripe one, under the roofs builded by the munificent atid 
pious Colet. For thee the Pauline Muses weep. In ele- 
gies that shall silence this crude prose they shall celebrate 
thy praise. 



THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 

I AM fond of passing my vacations (I believe I have 
said so 'jefore) at one or other of the Universities. Next 
to these my choice would fix me at some woody spot, 
such as the neighborhood of Henley affords in abun- 
dance, on the banks of my beloved Thames. Biit some* 



THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 51 

how or other my cousin contrive& to wheedle me, once 
in three or four seasons, to a watering-place. Old at- 
tachments cling to her in spite of experience. We have 
been dull at Worthing one summer, duller at Brighton 
another, dullest at Eastbourne a third, and are at this 
moment doing dreary penance at — Hastings! — and all be- 
cause we were happy many years ago for a brief week at — ■ 
Margate. That was our first seaside experiment, and many 
circumstances combined to make it the most agreeable hol- 
iday of my life. We had neither of us seen the sea, and we 
had never been from home so long together in company. 

Can I forget thee, thou old Margate Hoy, with thy 
weather-beaten, sun-burnt captain, and his rough accom- 
modations — ill exchanged for the foppery and fresh- 
water niceness of the modern steam-packet? To the 
winds and waves thou committedst thy goodly freight- 
age, and didst ask no aid of magic fumes and spells and 
boiling caldrons. With the gales of heaven thou went- 
est swimmingly ; or, when it was their pleasure, stoodest 
still with sailor-like patience. Thy course was natural, 
not forced, as in a hot-bed ; nor didst thou go poisoning 
the breath of ocean with sulphurous smoke — a great sea 
chimera, chimneying and furnacing the deep ; or liker to 
that fire-god parching up Scamander. 

Can I forget thy honest, yet slender crew, with their 
coy reluctant responses (yet to the suppression of any- 
thing like contempt) to the raw questions which we of 
the great city would be ever and anon putting to them, 
as to the uses of this or that strange naval implement ? 
Specially can I forget thee, thou happy medium, thou 
shade of refuge between ns and them, conciliating in- 
terpreter of their skill to our simplicity, comfortable 
ambassador between sea and land I — whose sailor-trou- 



q2 the last essays of ELlA. 

sers did not more convincingly assure thee to be an 
adopted denizen of the former than thy white cap and 
whiter apron over them, with thy neat-fingered practice 
in thy culinary vocation, bespoke thee to have been of 
inland nurture heretofore — a master cook of Eastcheap ? 
How busily didst thou ply thy multifarious occupation, 
cook, mariner, attendant, chamberlain : here, there, like 
another Ariel, flaming at once about all parts of the deck, 
yet with kindlier ministrations — not to assist the tem- 
pest, but, as if touched with a kindred sense of our in- 
firmities, to soothe tlie qualms which that untried motion 
might haply raise in our crude land-fancies. And when 
the o'er- washing billows drove us below deck (for it was 
far gone in October, and we had stiff and blowing weath- 
er), how did thy officious ministerings, still catering for 
our comfort, with cards, and cordials, and thy more cor- 
dial conversation, alleviate the closeness and the confine- 
ment of thy else (truth to say) not very savory nor very 
inviting little cabin ? 

With these additaments to boot, we had on board a 
fellow passenger, whose discourse in verity might have 
beguiled a longer voyage than we meditated, and have 
made mirth and wonder abound as far as from Thames 
to the Azores. He was a dark, Spanish- coniplexioned 
young man, remarkably handsome, with an officer like 
assurance, and an insuppressible volubility of assertion. 
He was, in fact, the greatest liar I had met with then or 
since. He was none of your hesitating, half story-tell- 
ers (a most painful description of mortals), who go on 
sounding your belief, and only giving you as much as 
they see you can swallow at a time — the nibbling pick- 
pockets of your patience — but one who committed down- 
right daylight depredations upon his neighbor's faith. 



THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 53 

He did not stand shivering upon the hrink, hut was a 
hearty, thorough-paced liar, and plunged at once into 
the depths of your credulity. I partly believe he made 
pretty sure of his company. Not many rich, not many 
wise, or learned, composed, at that time the common 
stowage of a Margate packet. We were, I am afraid, a 
set of as unseasoned Londoners (let our enemies give it a 
worse name) as Thames or Tooley Street at that time of 
day could have supplied. There might be an exception 
or two among us, but I scorn to make any invidious 
distinctions among such a jolly, companionable ship's 
company as those were whom I sailed with. Something, 
too, must be conceded to the Genius Loci. Had the 
confident fellow told us half the legends on land which 
he favored us with on the other element, I flatter myself 
the good sense of most of us would have revolted. But 
we were in a new world, with everything unfamiliar 
about us, and the time and place disposed us to the re- 
ception of any prodigious marvel whatsoever. Time has 
obliterated from my memory much of his wild fablings ; 
and the rest would appear but dull, as written, and to be 
read on shore. He had been Aide-de-camp (among other 
rare accidents and fortunes) to a Persian Prince, and at 
one blow had stricken off the head of the King of Oara- 
mania on horseback. He, of course, married the Prince's 
daughter. I forget what unlucky turn in the politics of 
that court, combining with the loss of his consort, was 
the reason of his quitting Persia; but, with the rapidity of 
a magician, he transported himself, along with his hear- 
ers, back to England, where we still found him in the 
confidence of great ladies. There was some story of a 
Princess— Elizabeth, if I remember— having intrusted to 
his care an extraordinary casket of jew^Js. upon sonw* 



54 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

extraordinary occasion ; but, as I am not certain of the 
name or circumstance at this distance of time, I must 
leave it to the Eoyal daughters of England to settle the 
honor among themselves in private. I can not call to 
mind half his pleasant wonders ; but I perfectly remem- 
ber that in the course of his travels he had seen a phoe- 
nix ; and he obligingly undeceived us of the vulgar error 
that there is but one of that species at a time, assuring 
us that they were not uncommon in some parts of Upper 
Egypt. Hitherto he had found the most implicit listen- 
ers. His dreaming fancies had transported us beyond 
the " ignorant present." But when (still hardying more 
and more in his triumphs over our simplicity) La went 
on to affirm that he had actually sailed through the legs 
of the Colossus at Rhodes, it really became necessary to 
make a stand. And here I must do justice to the good 
sense and intrepidity of one of our party, a youth that 
had hitherto been one of his most deferential auditors, 
who, from his recent reading, made bold to assure the 
gentleman that there must be some mistake, as " the 
Colossus in question had been destroyed long since " ; to 
whose opinion, delivered with all modesty, our hero was 
obliging enough to concede thus much, that " the figure 
was indeed a little damaged." This was the only oppo- 
sition he met with, and it did not at all seem to stagger 
him, for he proceeded with his fables, which the same 
youth appeared to swallow with still more complacency 
than ever — confirmed, as it were, by the extreme candor 
of that concessioi^. With these prodigies he wheedled 
as on till we came in sight of the Reculvers, which one 
of our own company (having been the voyage before) 
immediately recognizing, and pointing out to us, was 
oonsidered by us as no ordinary seaman. 



^HE OLd MAHGATE hoy. 55 

All this time sat upon the edge of the deck quite a 
different character. It was a lad, apparently very poor, 
very infirm, and very patient. His eye was ever on the 
sea, with a smile ; and, if he caught now and then some 
snatches of these wild legends, it was by accident, and 
they seemed not to concern him. The waves to him 
whispered more pleasant stories. He was as one, being 
with us, but not of us. He heard the bell of dinner ring 
without stirring; and when some of us pulled out our 
private stores— our cold meat and our salads— he pro- 
duced none, and seemed to want none. Only a solitary 
biscuit he had laid in— provision for the one or two days 
and nights to which these vessels then were oftentimes 
obliged to prolong their voyage. Upon a nearer ac- 
quaintance with him, which he seemed neither to court 
Qor decline, we learned that he was going to Margate 
with the hope of being admitted into the Infirmary there 
for sea-bathing. His disease was a scrofula, which ap- 
peared to have eaten all over him. He expressed great 
hopes of a cure ; and when we asked him whether he 
had any friends where he was going, he replied " he had 
no friends." 

These pleasant and some mournful passages, with the 
first sight of the sea, cooperating with youth, and a sense 
of holidays and out-of-door adventure, to me that had 
been pent up in populous cities for many months before 
—have left upon my mind the fragrance as of summer 
days gone by, bequeathing nothing but their remem- 
brance for cold and wintry hours to chew upon. 

Will it be thought a digression (it may spare some 
anwelcome comparisons), if I endeavor to account fo- 
the dissatisfaction which I have heard so many persons 
confess to have felt (as I did myself feel in part on this 



66 THfi LAST ESSAYS OF fiLIA. 

occasion) at the sight of the sea for the first time? I 
think the reason usually given — referring to the incapa- 
city of actual objects for satisfying our preconceptions 
of them — scarcely goes deep enough into the question. 
Let the same person see a lion, an elephant, a mountain, 
for the first time in his life, and he shall perhaps feel 
himself a little mortified. The things do not fill up that 
space which the idea of them seemed to take up in his 
mind. But they have still a correspondency to his first 
notion, and in time grow up to it, so as to produce a 
very similar impression ; enlarging themselves (if I may 
say so) upon familiarity. But the sea remains a disap- 
pointment. Is it not, that in the latter we had ex- 
pected to behold (absurdly, I grant, but I am afraid, by 
the law of imagination, unavoidably) not a definite ob- 
ject, as those wild beasts, or that mountain compassable 
by the eye, but all the sea at once, the oommensueate 
ANTAGONIST OF THE EAETH ? I do not Say we tell our- 
selves so much, but the craving of the mind is to be sat- 
isfied with nothing less. I will suppose the case of a 
young person of fifteen (as I then was), knowing nothing 
of the sea but from description. He comes to it for the 
first time — all that he has been reading of it all his life, 
and that the most enthusiastic part of life, all he has 
gathered from narratives of wandering seamen, what he 
has gained from true voyages, and what he cherishes as 
credulously from romance and poetry, crowding their 
images, and exacting strange tributes from ex3)ectation. 
He thinks of the great deep, and of those w^ho go down 
unto it ; of its thousand isles, and of the vast continents 
it washes; of its receiving the mighty Plate or Orellana 
into its bosom, without disturbance or sense of augmen- 
tation ; of Biscfty swells and the mariner 



THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 57 

For many a day, and many a dreadful night, 
Incessant laboring round the stormy Cape ; 

of fatal rocks, and the " still-vexed Bermootlies " ; of 
great whirlpools, and the water-spout ; of sunken ships, 
and the sunless treasures swallowed up in the unrestor- 
ing depths ; of fishes and quaint monsters, to which all 
ttiat is terrible upon earth 

Be but as buggs to frighten babes withal, 
Compared with the creatures in the sea's entral ; 

of Ea^ied savages, and Juan Fernandez ; of pearls, and 
shells ; of coral beds, and of enchanted isles ; of mer- 
maids' grots — 

I do not assert that in sober earnest he expects to be 
shown all these wonders at once, but he is under the 
tyranny of a mighty faculty, which haunts him witli 
confused hints and shadows of all these ; and when the 
actual object opens first upon him, seen (in tame weather, 
too, most likely) from our unromantic coasts — a speck, 
a slip of sea-water, as it shows to him — what can it 
prove but a very unsatisfying and even diminutive en- 
tertainment ? Or if he has come to it from the mouth 
of a river, was it much more than the river widening ? 
*nd, even out of the sight of land, what had he but a flat, 
watery horizon about him, nothing comparable to the 
vast o'ercurtaining sky, his familiar object, seen daily 
without dread and amazement? Who, in similar cir- 
cumstances, has not been tempted to exclaim with Cha- 
td\Mj in the poem of Gebir — 

Is this the mighty ocean ? is this all ! 

I love tpwo or coimtry ; hut this detestable Cinq^ue 



58 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

Port is neither. I hate these scrubbed shoots, thrusting 
out their starved foliage from between the horrid fissures 
of dustj, innutritions rocks, whicli the amateur calls 
" verdure to the edge of the sea." I require woods, and 
they show me stunted coppices. I cry out for the water- 
brooks, and pant for fresh streams and inland murmurs. 
I can not stand all day on the naked beach, watching the 
©apricious hues of the sea, shifting like the colors of a 
dying mullet. I am tired of looking out at the windows* 
of this island prison. I would fain retire into the inte- 
rior of my cage. While I gaze upon the sea, I want to 
be on it, over it, across it. It binds me in with chains, 
as of iron. My thoughts are abroad. I should not so 
feel in Staffordshire. There is no home for me here. 
Thi&re is no sense of home at Hastings. It is a place of 
fugitive resort, a heterogeneous assemblage of sea-mew? 
and stock-brokers, Amphitrites of the town, and misses' 
that coquet with the Ocean. If it were what it was in 
its primitive shape, and what it ought to have remained. 
a fair, honest, fishing town, and no more, it were some- 
thing : with a few straggling fishermen's huts scattered 
about, artless as its cliffs, and with their materials filched 
from them, it were something. I could abide to dwell 
with Meshech, to assort with fisher-swains and smug- 
glers. There are, or I dream there are, many of thi>» 
latter occupation here. Their faces become the placcc 
I like a smuggler. He is the only honest thief. He robs 
nothing but the revenue — an abstraction I never greatly 
cared about. I could go out with them in their mack- 
erel boats, or about their less ostensible business, with 
some satisfaction. I can even tolerate those poor vic- 
tims to monotony, who from day to day pace along the 
l;)^^chj in endless pro|^ress e^d recurrence, to watch their 



THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 59 

illicit countrjmf^n — townsfolk or brethren perchance — • 
whistling to the sheathing and unsheathing of their cut- 
lasses (their only solace), who, under the mild name of 
preventive service, keep up a legitimated civil warfare in 
the deplorable absence of a foreign one, to show their 
detestation of run hollands, and zeal for Old England. 
But it is the visitants from town that come here to say 
that they have been here, with no more relish of the sea 
than a pond-perch or a dace might be supposed to have, 
that are my aversion. I feel like a foolish dace in these 
regions, and have as little toleration for myself here as 
for them. What can they want here? If they had a 
true relish of the ocean, why have they brought all this 
land luggage with them ? or why pitch their civilized 
tents in the desert? What mean these scanty book- 
rooms — marine libraries as they entitle them — if the sea 
were, as they would have us believe, a book " to read 
strange matter in " ? What are their foolish concert- 
rooms, if they come, as they would fain be thought to 
do, to listen to the music of the waves ? All is false and 
hollow pretension. They come because it is the fashion, 
and to spoil the nature of the place. They are, mostly, 
as I have said, stock-brokers ; but I have watched the 
better sort of them. Now and then an honest citizen (of 
the old stamp), in the si'Tiplicity of his heart, shall bring 
down his wife and daughters to taste the sea breezes. I 
always know the date of their arrival. It is easy to see 
it in their countenance. A day or two they go wander- 
ing on the shingles, picking up cockle-shells, and think- 
ing them great things ; but, in a poor week, imagination 
slackens : they begin to discover that cockles produce no 
pearls, and then — O then ! — if I could interpret for the 
pretty creatures (I know they have not the courage to 



60 "i'HE 1.AST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

confess it themselves), how gladly would they exchange 
their seaside rambles for a Sunday walk on the green* 
sward of their accustomed Twickenham meadows 1 

I would ask of one of these sea-charmed eniigrantSj 
who think tliey truly love the sea, with its wild usageSj 
what would their feelings be if some of the unsophisti- 
cated aborigines of this place, encouraged by their cour- 
teous questionings here, should venture, on the faith ol 
such assured sympathy between them, to return the visit, 
and come up to see — London. I must imagine them 
with their lishing-tackle on their back, as we carry our 
town necessaries. What a sensation would it cause in 
Lothbury. What vehement laughter would it not excite 
among 

The daughters of Cheapside, and wives of Lombard Street. 

I am sure that no town-bred or inland-born subjects 
can feel their true and natural nourishment at these sea- 
piaces. Nature, where she does not mean us for mariners 
and vagabonds, bids us stay at home. The salt foam 
seems to nourish a spleen. I am not half so good-natured 
as by the milder waters of my natural river. I would 
exchange these sea-gulls for swans, and scud a swallovi 
for ever about the banks of Tamesis. 



TEE CONYALESOENT. 

A PRETTY severe fit of indisposition which, under the 
name of a nervous fever, has made a prisoner of me for 
some weeks past, and is but slowly leaving me, has re- 



tHE CONVALfiSCENt tfl 

duced me to an incapacity of reflecting upon any topic 
foreign to itself. Expect no healthy conclusions from 
me this month, reader ; I can offer you only sick men's 
dreams. 

And truly the whole state of sickness is such; for 
what else is it but a magnificent dream for a man to lie 
abed, and draw daylight curtains about him, and, shut- 
ting out the sun, to induce a total oblivion of all the 
works which are going on under it ? — to be3ome insen- 
sible to all the operations of life, except the beatings of 
one feeble pulse ? 

If there be a regal solitude, it is a sick-bed. How the 
patient lords it there ! what caprices he acts without 
control ! how king-like he sways his pillow — tumbling, 
and tossing, and shifting, and raising, and lowering, and 
thumping, and flattening, and molding it, to the ever- 
varying requisitions of his throbbing temples ! 

He changes sides oftener than a politician. Now he 
lies full length, then half length, obliquely, transversely, 
head and feet quite across the bed ; and none accuses him 
of tergiversation. Within the four curtains he is abso- 
lute. They are his Mare Olausum. 

How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man's self 
to himself ! he is his own exclusive object. Supreme 
selfishness is inculcated upon him as his only duty. 'Tis 
the Two Tables of the Law to him. He has nothing to 
think of but how to get well. What passes out of doors, 
or within them, so he hear not the jarring of them, 
affects him not. 

A little while ago he was greatly concerned in the 
event of a lawsuit, which was to be the making or the 
marring of his dearest friend. He was to be seen trudge 
ing about upon this man's errand to fifty quarters of the 



62 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELlA. 

town at once, Jogging this witness, refreshing that soli- 
citor. The cause was to come ou yesterday. He is 
absolutely as indifferent to the decision as if it were 
a question to be tried at Pekin. Perad venture from 
some whispering, going on about the house, not intended 
for his hearing, he picks up enough to make him under^ 
stand that things went cross-grained in the Court yester- 
day, and his friend is ruined. But the word " friend " 
and the word " ruin " disturb him no more than so much 
jargon. He is not to think of anything but how to get 
better. 

What a world of foreign cares are merged in that 
absorbing consideration ! 

He has put on the strong armor of sickness, he is 
wrapped in the callous hide of suffering ; he keeps his 
sympathy, like some curious vintage, under trusty lock 
and key, for his own use only. 

He lies pitying himself, honing and moaning to him- 
self ; he yearneth over himself ; his bowels are even 
melted within him, to think what he suffers ; he is not 
ashamed to weep over himself. 

He is for ever plotting how to do some good to 
himself; studying little stratagems and artiticial alle- 
viations. 

He makes the most of himself ; dividing himself, by 
an allowable fiction, into as many distinct individuals as 
he hath sore and sorrowing members. Sometimes he 
meditates— as of a thing apart from him — upon his poor 
aching head, and that dull pain which, dozing or waking, 
lay in it all the past night like a log, or palpable sub- 
stance of pain, not to be removed without opening the 
very skull, as it seemed, to take it thence. Or he pitie» 
his long, clammy, attenuated fingers. He compassion- 



tHE OOiVVALESCENT. 63 

atb(3 tiimseif ail over ; and his bed is a verj discipline of 
hutnanity ana tender neari. 

He IS nis own sympathizer, and instinctively feels 
that none can so well perform that office for him. He 
cares for tew spectators to his tragedy. Only that punc- 
tual face of the old nurse pleaser? bim, that announces 
his broths and his cordials. He iikes it because it is so 
unmoved, and because he can pour lorth his feverish 
ejaculations before it as unreservedly as to his bedpost. 

To the world's business he is dead. He understands 
not what the callings and occupations of mortals are ; onlj 
he has a glimmering conceit of some sucJti tning, whet 
the doctor makes his daily call ; and even in tfie lines oi 
that busy face he reads no multiplicity of patients, but 
solely conceives of himself as the sicTc man. I'o what 
other uneasy couch the good man is hastening when he 
slips out of his chamber, folding up his thin douceur so 
carefully, for fear of rustling, is no speculation which he 
can at present entertain. He thinks only of the regular 
return of the same phenomenon at the saire hour to- 
morrow. 

Household rumors touch him not. Some faint mur- 
mur, indicative of life going on within the house, soother 
him, while he knows not distinctly what it is. He is not 
to know anything, not to think of anything. Servants 
gliding up or down the distant staircase, treading as 
upon velvet, gently keep his ear awake, so long as he 
troubles not himself further than with some feeble guess 
at their errands. Exacter knowledge would be a burden 
to him ; he can just endure the pressure of conjecture. 
He opens his eye faintly at the dull stroke of the muffled 
knocker, and closes it again without asking " Wlio was 
it 2 " He is flattered b.y a general notion that inquiries 



64 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA„ 

are making after him, bnt he cares not to know the name 
of the inquirer. In the general stillness and awful hush 
of the house, he lies in state, and feels his sovereignty. 

To be sick is to enjoy monarchical prerogatives. Com- 
pare the silent tread, and quiet ministry almost by the 
eye only, with which he is served, with the careless de- 
meanor, the unceremonious goings in and out (slapping^ 
of doors, or leaving them open) of the very same atten- 
dants when he is getting a little better ; and you will 
confess that from the bed of sickness (throne let me 
rather call it) to the elbow-chair of convalescence is a 
fall from dignity amounting to a deposition. 

How convalescence shrinks a man back to his pris- 
tine stature ! Where is now the space which he occu- 
pied so lately in his own, in the family's eye ? The scene 
of hia regalities, his sick-room, which was his presence- 
chamber, where he lay and acted his despotic fancies — • 
how is it reduced to a common bedroom ! The trimness 
of the very bed has something petty and unmeaning 
about it. It is made every day. How unlike to that 
wavy, many-furrowed, oceanic surface, which it pre- 
sented so short a time since, when to mahe it was a ser- 
vice not to be thought of at ofteuer than three- or four- 
day revolutions, when the patient was with pain and 
grief to be lifted for a little while out of it, to submit to 
the encroachments of unwelcome neatness, and decen- 
cies which his shaken frame deprecated ; then to be 
lifted into it again, for another three or four days' res- 
pite, to flounder it out of shape again, w^hile every fresh 
farrow was an historical record of some shifting posture, 
some uneasy turning, some seeking for a little ease ; and 
che shrunken skin scarce told a truer story than the 
crumpled coverlid. 



ffiE CONVALESCENT. ^§ 

Hushed are those mysterious sighs — those groans so 
much more awful, while we knew not from what caverns 
of vast hidden suffering they proceeded. The Lernean 
pangs are quenched. The riddle of sickness is solved : 
and Philoctetes is become an ordinary personage. 

Perhaps some relic of the sick man's dream of greats 
ness survives in the still lingering visitations of the med= 
ical attendant. But how is he, too, changed with every« 
thing else I Can this be he— this man of news, of chat, 
of anecdote, of everything but physic— can this be he, 
who so lately came between the patient and his cruel 
enemy, as on some solemn embassy from Nature, erect- 
ing herself into a high mediating party ? Pshaw I 'tis 
some old woman. 

Farewell with him all that made sickness pompous— 
the spell that hushed the household— the desert-like 
stillness, felt throughout its inmost chambers— the mute 
attendance— the inquiry by looks— the still softer deli- 
cacies of self-attention— the sole and single eye of dis- 
temper alonely fixed upon itself— world-thoughts excluded 
— the man a world unto himself— his own theatre — 

What a speck is he dwindled into I 

In this flat swamp of convalescence, left by the ebb 
of sickness, yet far enough from the terra firma of estab- 
lished health, your note, dear Editor, reached me, re- 
questing—an article. In Articulo Mortis, thought I ; but 
it is something hard— and the quibble, wretched as it 
was, relieved me. The summons, unseasonable as it 
appeared, seemed to link me on again to the petty busi- 
nesses of life, which I had lost sight of; a gentle call to 
activity, however trivial; a wholesome weaning from 
that preposterous dream of self-absorption— the pufl^ 
5 



66 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

state of sickness — in which I confess to have lain so 
long, insensible to the magazines and monarchies of the 
world alike ; to its laws, and to its literature. The 
hypochondriac flatus is subsiding ; the acres which in 
imagination I had spread over — for the sick man swells 
in the sole contemplation of his single sufferings, till he 
becomes a Tityus to himself — are wasting to a span ; and 
for the giant of self-importance which I was so lately, 
you have me once again in my natural pretensions — the 
lean and meager figure of your insignificant Monthly 
Contributor. 



CAPTAIN" JACKSON. 

Among the deaths in our obituary for this month, 1 
observe with concern " At his cottage on the Bath road. 
Captain Jackson." The name and attribution are com- 
mon enough ; but a feeling like reproach persuades me 
that this could have been no other in fact than my dear 
old friend, who some five and twenty years ago rented 
a tenement, which he was pleased to dignify with the 
appellation here used, about a mile from Westbourne 
Green. Alack, how good men, and the good turns they 
do us, slide out of memory, and are recalled but by the 
surprise of some such sad memento as that which now 
lies before me ! 

He whom I mean was a retired half -pay officer, with 
a wife and two grown-up daughters, whom he main- 
tained with the port and notions of gentlewomen upon 
that slender professional allowance. Comely girls they 
were, too. 



CAPTAIN JACKSON. 67 

And was I in danger of forgetting this man? — his 
cheerful suppers — the noble tone of hospitality, when 
first you set your foot in the cottage — the anxious minis- 
terings about you, where little or nothing (God knows) 
was to be ministered — Amalthea's horn in a poor plat- 
ter — the power of self-enchantment, by which, in his 
magnificent wishes to entertain you, he multiplied his 
means to bounties. 

You saw with your bodily eyes indeed what seemed 
a bare scrag — cold savings from the foregone meal — 
remnant hardly sufficient to send a mendicant from the 
door contented. But in the copious will, the reveling 
imagination of your host — the " mind, the mind. Master 
Shallow" — whole beeves were spread before you — heca- 
tombs — no end appeared to the profusion. 

It was the widow's cruse — the loaves and fishes; 
carving could not lessen, nor helping diminish it ; the 
stamina were left ; the elemental bone still flourished, 
divested of its accidents. 

" Let us live while we can," methinks I hear the 
open-handed creature exclaim ; " While we have, let us 
not want"; "Here is plenty left"; "Want for nothing" 
— with many more such hospitable sayings, the spurs of 
appetite, and old concomitants of smoking boards and 
feast-oppressed chargers. Then, sliding a slender ratio 
of Single Gloucester upon his wife's plate or the daugh- 
ters', he would convey the remnant rind into his own, 
with a merry quirk of "nearer the bone," etc., and de- 
claring that he universally preferred the outside. For 
we liad our table distinctions, you are to know, and 
some of us in a manner sat above the salt. None but 
his guest or guests dreamed of tasting flesh luxuries at 
night ; the fragments were vere Tiotq'Hihus sacra. But of 



6s THE LAST ESSAYS Off ELIA. 

one filing or another tliere wa3 always enougli, and leav- 
ings ; only he would sometimes finish the remainder 
crust, to show that he wished no savings. 

Wine we had none, nor, except on very rare occa- 
sions, spirits ; but the sensation of wine was there. Some 
i,hin kind of ale I remember — "British beverage," he 
would say ! " Push about, my boys " ; " Drink to your 
sweethearts, girls." At every meager draught a toast 
must ensue, or a song. All the forms of good liquor 
were there, with none of the effects wanting. Shut 
your eyes, and you would swear a capacious bowl of 
punch was fcaming in the^ center, with beams of gener- 
ous f*ort or Madeira radiating to it from each of the 
table corneis. You got flustered, without knowing 
whence ;* tipsy upon words; and reeled under the po- 
tency or nis unperforming Bacchanalian encouragements. 

We nad our songs — " Why, Soldiers, why," and the 
"British Grenadiers" — in which last we were all obliged 
to bear chorus. Both the daughters sang. Their pro- 
ficiency was a nightly theme — the masters he had given 
them — tne " no-expense " which he spared to accom- 
plish them in a science "so necessary to young women." 
But then — they could not sing " without the instru- 
ment." 

Sacred, and by me never-to-be-violated. Secrets of 
Poverty! Should I disclose your honest aims at gran- 
deur, your makeshit^ efforts of magnificence ? Sleep, 
sleep, wirh all thy broken keys, if one of the bunch be 
extant ; tlirummed by a thousand ancestral thumbs ; 
dear, cracked spinet of dearer Louisa I Without men- 
tion of mine, be dumb, thou thin accompanier of her 
thinner warble! A veil be spread over the dear de- 
lighted face of the well-deluded father, who now, haplj 



CAPTAIN JACKSON, 69 

listening to cherubic notes, scarce feels sincerer v»asure 
than when she awakened thy time-shaken cnords re- 
sponsive of the twitterings of thjit slender image of a 
voice. 

We were not without oar literary talk either. It did* 
not extend far, but as far as it went, it was good. It 
was bottomed well ; had good grounds to go upon. In 
the cottage was a room, which tradition authenticated to 
have been the same in which Glover, in his occasional 
retirements, had penned the greater part of his " Leoni- 
das." This circumstance was nightly quoted, though 
none of the present inmates, that I could discover, ap- 
peared ever to have met with the poem in question. 
But that was no matter. Glover had written there, and 
the anecdote was pressed into the account of the family 
importance. It diffused a learned air through the apart- 
ment, the little side casement of which (the poet's study 
window), opening upon a superb view as far as the 
pretty spire of Harrow, over domains and patrimonial 
acres, not a rood nor square yard whereof our host could 
call his own, yet gave occasion to an immoderate ex- 
pansion of — vanity shall I call it ? — in his bosom, as he 
showed them in a glowing summer evening. It was all 
his, he took it all in, and communicated rich portions of 
it to his guests. It was a part of his largess, his hospi- 
tality ; it was going over his grounds ; he was lord for 
the time of showing them, and you the implicit lookers- 
up to his magnificence. 

He was a juggler, who threw mists before your 
eyes ; you had no time to detect his fallacies. He would 
say, "Hand me the silver sugar tongs" ; and before you 
could discover it was a single spoon, and that plated, he 
would disturb and captivate your imagination by a mis' 



70 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

nomer of " the urn " for a teakettle, or bj calling a 
homely bench a sofa. Eich men direct you to their fur- 
niture, poor ones divert you from it ; he neither did one 
nor the other, but by simply assuming that everything 
was handsome about him, you were positively at a de- 
mur what you did or did not see at the cottage. With 
nothing to live on, he seemed to live on everything. He 
v/had a stock of wealth in his mind ; not that which is 
/ properly termed Content^ for in truth he was not to be 
contained at all, but overflowed all bounds by the force 
of a magnificent self-delusion. 

Enthusiasm is catching ; and even his wife, a sober 
native of North Britain, who generally saw things more 
as they were, was not proof against the continual colli- 
sion of his credulity. Her daughters were rational and 
discreet young women ; in the main, perhaps, not insen- 
sible to their true circumstances. I have seen them as- 
sume a thoughtful air at times. But such was the pre- 
ponderating opulence of his fancy, that I am persuaded, 
not for any half hour together did they ever look their 
own prospects fairly in the face. There was no resisting 
the vortex of his temperament. His riotous imagination 
conjured up handsome settlements before their eyes, 
which kept them up in the eye of the world too, and 
seem at last to have realized themselves ; for they 
both have married since, I am told, more than respect- 
ably. 

It is long since, and my memory waxes dim on some 
subjects, or I should wish to convey some notion of the 
manner in which the pleasant creature described the cir- 
cumstances of his own wedding-day. I faintly remem- 
ber something of a chaise and four, in which he made 
' is entry into Glasgow on that morning to fetch the 



CAPTAIN JACKSON. 71 

bride tome, or carry her thither, I forget which. It so 
completely made out the stanza of the old ballad— 

When we came down through Glasgow town, 

We were a comely sight to see ; 
My love was clad in black velvet, 

And I myself in cramasie. 

I suppose it was the only occasion upon which his 
f^n actual splendor at all corresponded with the world's 
notions on that subject. In homely cart or traveling 
caravan, by whatever humble vehicle they chanced to 
be transported in less prosperous days, the ride through 
Glasgow came back upon his fancy, not as a humiliating 
contrast, but as a fair occasion for reverting to that one 
day's state. It seemed an "equipage etern" from which 
no power of fate or fortune, once mounted, had power 
thereafter to dislodge him. 

There is some merit in putting a handsome face upon 
indigent circumstances. To bully and swagger away 
the sense of them before strangers may not be always 
discommendable. Tibbs, and Bobadil, even when de- 
tected, have more of our admiration than contempt. 
But for a man to put the cheat upon himself — to play 
the Bobadil at home, and, steeped in poverty up to the 
lips, to fancy himself all the while chin-deep in riches- 
is a strain ot constitutional philosophy, and a mastery 
over fortune, vhich was reserved for my old friend Oajr- 
tain Jackson. 



7^ THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELlA. 



THE SUPEEANNUATED MAN". 

Sera tamen respexit 
Libertas. Virgil. 

A clerk I was in London gay. 

O'Keefe, 

If peradventure, reader, it haa been thj lot to waste 
the golden years of thy life — thy shining youth — in the 
irksome confinement of an office ; to have thy prison 
days prolonged through middle age down to decrepi- 
tude and silver hairs, without hope of release or respite; 
to have lived to forget that there are such things as holi- 
days, or to remember them but as the prerogatives of 
childhood ; then, and then only, will you be able to ap- 
preciate my deliverance. 

It is now six-and- thirty years since I took my seat 
at the desk in Mincing Lane. Melancholy was the tran- 
sition at fourteen from the abundant playtime, and the 
frequently intervening vacations of schooldays, to the 
eight, nine, and sometimes ten hours a day attendanc^e 
at the counting-house. But time partially reconciles us 
to anything. 1 gradually became content — doggedly con- 
' tented, as wild animals in cages. 

It is true I had my Sundays to myself ; but Sundays, 
admirable as the institution of them is for purposes of 
worship, are for that very reason the very worst adapted 
for days of unbending and recreation. In particular, 
there is a gloom for me attendant upon a City Sunday, a 
weight in the air. I miss the cheerful cries of London, 
the music and the ballad-singers — the buzz and stirring 
murmur of the streets. ,,^Those eternal bells depress me. 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 73 

The closed shops repel me. Prints, pictures, all the glit- 
tering and endless succession of knacks and gewgaws, 
and ostentatiously displayed wares of tradesmen, which 
make a week-daj saunter through the less busy parts of 
the metropolis so delightful, are shut out. No bookstalls 
deliciously to idle over ; ]io busy faces to recreate the 
idle man who contemplates them ever passing by ; the 
yery place of business a charm by contrast to his tem- 
porary relaxation from it. { Nothing to be seen but un- 
happy countenances-}or half-happy at best— of emanci- 
pated 'prentices and little tradesfolks, with here and 
there a servant-maid that has got leave to go out, who, 
slaving all the week, with the habit has lost almost ther 
capacity of enjoying a free hour, and livelily expressing 
the hollgwness of a day's pleasuring. The very stroll- /, 
ers in the fiells onlHat day look anything but comfort- ' 
able. 

But besides Sundays I had a day at Easter, and a day 
at Christinas, witli a full week in the summer to go and 
air myself in my native fields of Hertfordshirer This 
last was a great indulgence, and the prospect of its recur- 
rence, I believe, alone kept me up through the year, and 
made my durance tolerable. But when the week came 
round, did the glittering phantom of the distance keep 
1 touch with me? or rather, was it not a series of seven 
i uneasy days, spent in restless pursuit of pleasure, and a 
' wearisome anxiety to find out how to make the most of 
I them ? Where was the quiet, where the promised rest ? 
1 Before I had a taste of it, it was vanished. I was at the 
desk again, counting upon the fifty-one tedious weeks 
tthat must intervene before such another snatch would 
£ come. Still the prospect of its coming threw something 
4 of an illumination upon the darker side of my captivity. 



74 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

vV^ithout it, as I have said, I could scarcely have sustained 
my thralldom. 

Independently of the rigors of attendance, I have 
Dver been haunted with a sense (perhaps a mere caprice) 
of incapacity for business. This, daring my latter years, 
had increased to such a degree that it was visible in all 
the lines of my countenance. My health and my good 
spirits flagged. I had perpetually a dread of some crisis, 
io which I should be found unequal. Besides my day- 
light servitude, I served over again all night in my sleep, 
and would awake with terrors of imaginary false entries, 
errors in my accounts, and the like. I was fifty years of 
age, and no prospect of emancipation presented itself. I 
had grown to my desk, as it were ; and the wood had 
entered into my soul. 

My fellows in the ofiBce would sometimes rally me 
upon the trouble legible in my countenance ; but I did 
not know that it had raised the suspicions of any of my 
employers, when, on the 5th of last month, a day ever to 

be remembered by me, L , the junior partner in the 

firm, calling me on one side, directly taxed me with my 
bad looks, and frankly inquired the cause of them. So 
taxed, I honestly made confession of my infirmity, and 
added that I was afraid I should eventually be obliged to 
resign his service. He spoke some words of course to 
hearten me, and there the matter rested. A whole week 
I remained laboring under the impression that I had 
acted imprudently in my disclosure ; that I had foolishly 
given a handle against myself, and had been anticipating 
my own dismissal. A week passed in this manner, the 
most anxious one, I verily believe, in my whole life, 
when, on the evening of the 12th of April, just as I was 
^bout quitting my desk to go home QS might be about 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 75 

eagian o'clock), I received an awful summons to attend 
the presence of the whole assembled firm in the formi- 
dable Dack parlor. I thought, NTovv my time is surelj" 
come ; I have done for myseK ; I am going to be told 

that tney have no longer occasion for me. L , I 

could see, smiled at the terror I was in, which v/as &, 

little relief to me, when to my utter astonishment B -, 

the eldest partner, began a formal harangue to me on the 
length of my services, my very meritorious conduct dur- 
ing the whole of the time. (The deuce, thought I, how 
did he find out that ? I profess I never had the confi- 
dence to think as much.) He went on to descant on the 
expediency of retiring at a certain time of life (how my 
heart panted !), and, asking me a few questions as to the 
amount of my own property, of which I have a I'ttlo. 
ended with a proposal, to which his three partners 
nodded a j^rave assent, that I should accept from the 
house, which I had served so well, a pension for life to 
the amount of two thirds of my accustomed salary™ a 
magnificent offer ! I do not know what I answered be- 
tween surprise and gratitude, but it was understood that 
I accepted their proposal, and I was told that 1 was free 
from that hour to leave their service. I stammered out 
a bow, and at just ten minutes after eight I went tome 
■—for ever. This noble benefit — gratitude forbids me to 
conceal their names — I owe to the kindness of the most 
munificent firm in the world — the house of Boldero, 
Merryweather, Bosanquet & Lacy. 

Esto perpetua I 

For the first day or two 1 felt stunned, overwhelmed. 
I could only apprehend my felicity ; I was too confused 
to taste it sincerely. I wandered about, thinking I was 



ye 



THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 



happy; and knowing that I was not. I was in the coik 
dition of a prisoner in the old Bastile, suddenly let loose 
after a forty years' confinement. I could scarce trust 
myself with myself. It was like passing out of Time 
into Eternity — for it is a sort of Eternity for a man to 
have his Time all to himself. It seemed to me that I 
had more time on my hands than I could ever manage. 
From a poor man, poor in Time, I was suddenly lifted 
up into a vast revenue ; I could see no end of my posses- 
sions ; I wanted some steward, or judicious bailiff, to 
manage my estates in Time for me. And here let me 
caution persons grown old in active business, not lightly, 
nor without weighing their own resources, to forego 
their customary employment aU at once, for there may 
be danger in it. I feel it by myself, but I know tliat my 
resources are sufficient; and now that those first giddy 
raptures have subsided, I have a quiet home-feeling ot 
the blessedness of my condition. I am in no hurry. 
Having all holidays, I am as though I had none. If 
Time hung heavy upon me, I could walk it away ; but I 
do not walk all day long, as I used to do in those old 
transient holidays, thirty miles a day, to make the most, 
of them. If Time were troublesome, I could read it 
away ; but I do Twt read in that violent measure with 
which, having no Time my own but candlelight Time, I 
used to weary out my head and eyesight in bygone win- 
ters. I walk, read, or scribble (as now), just when the 
fit seizes me. I no longer hunt after pleasure : I let it 
come to mco I am like the man 

. „ . . that's bom, and has his years come to him 
In some green desert. 

" Years I " you will say ; " what is this superan- 



THE SUPEKANNUATED MAN, ft 

nnated simpleton calculating upon ? He has already told 

us he is past fifty." 

I have indeed lived nominally fifty years, but deduct 
out of them the hours which I have lived to other peo- 
ple, and not to myself, and you will find me still a young 
fellow. For that is the only true Time which a man can 
Iproperly call his own, that which he has all to himself; 
/the rest, though in so]ne sense he may he said to live it, 
is other people's Time, not his. The remnant of my poor 
days, long or short, is at least multiplied for me three- 
fold. My ten next years, if I stretch so far, will he as 
long as any preceding thirty. 'Tis a fair rule-of- three sum. 

Among the strange phantasies which beset me at the 
commencement of my freedom, and of which all traces 
are not yet gone, one was that a vast tract of Time had 
intervened since I quitted tlie Oounting-House. I could 
not conceive of it as an affair of yesterday. The part- 
ners, and the clerks with whom I had for so many years, 
and for so many hours in each day of the year, been 
closely associated — being suddenly removed from them 
— they seemed as dead to me. There is a fine passage, 
which may serve to illustrate this fancy, in a Tragedy 
by Sir Robert Howard, speaking of a friend's death : 

.... 'Twas but just now^he went away; 
I have not since had time to shed a tear ; 
And yet the distance does the same appear 
As if he had been a thousand years from me. 
Time takes no measure in Eternity. 

To dissipate this awkward feeling I have been fain 
to go among them once or twice since ; to visit my old 
desk-fellov/s — my co-brethren of the quill — that I had 
left below in the state militant. 'Not all the kindness 



78 ■ f HS LAST ESSAYS OF ELiA. ' 

with Tv^hich tliej received me could quite restore to me 
that pleasant familiarity which I had heretofore enjoyed 
among them. We cracked some of onr old jokes, but 
methought they went off but faintly. My old desk, the 
peg where I hung my hat, were appropriated to another. 
I knew it must be, but I could not take it kindly. D — 1 
take me if I did not feel some remorse — beast if I had 
not — at quitting my old compeers, the faithful partners 
of my toils for six-and-thirty years, that smoothed for 
me with their jokes and conundrums the ruggedness of 
my professional road. Had it been so rugged, then, after 
all ? or was I a coward simply ? Well, it is too late to 
repent ; and I also know that these suggestions are a 
common fallacy of the mind on such occasions. But my 
heart smote me. I had violently broken the bands be- 
twixt us. It was at least not courteous. I shall be some 
time before I get quite reconciled to the separation. 
Farewell, old cronies ; yet not for long, for again and 
again I will come among ye, if I shall have your leave. 

Farewell, Ch , dry, sarcastic, and friendly ! Do -, 

mild, slow to move, and gentlemanly ! PI , officious 

to do, and to volunteer, good services I And thou, thou 
dreary pile, fit mansion for a Gresham or a Whittington 
of old, stately house of Merchants ; with thy labyrinthine 
passages, and light-excluding, pent-up offices, where can- 
dles for one half the year supplied the place of the sun's 
light ; unhealthy contributor to my weal, stern fosterer 
of my living, farewell ! In thee remain, and not in the 
obscure collection of some wandering bookseller, my 
*' works " ! There let them rest, as I do from my labors, 
piled on thy massive shelves, more MSS. in folio than 
ever Aquinas left, and full as useful I My mantle I be- 
queath among ye. 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 79 

A fortnight has passed since the date of my first 
communication. At that period I was approaching to 
tranquillity, but had not reached it. I boasted of a calm 
indeed, but it was comparative only. Something of the 
first flutter was left ; an unsettling sense of novelty ; the 
dazzle to weak eyes of unaccustomed light. I missed 
^•my old chains, forsooth, as if they had been some neces= 
3ary part of my apparel. I was a poor Carthusian, from 
strict cellular discipline suddenly by some revolution re- 
turned upon the world. I am now as if I had never 
been other than my own master. It is natural for nie 
to go where 1 pleasf:, to do what I please. I find myselr 
at eleven o'clock in the day in Bond Street, and it seems 
to me that I have been sauntering there at that very 
hour for years past. I digress into Soho, to explore a 
bookstall. Methinks I have been thirty years a collector. 
There is nothing strange nor new in it. I find myself 
before a fine picture in the morning. Was it ever other- 
wise ? What is become of Fish Street Hill ? Where is 
Fenchurch Street ? Stones of old Mincing Lane, which 
I have worn with my daily pilgrimage for six-and-thirty 
years, to the footsteps of what toil-worn clerk are your 
everlasting flints now vocal ? I indent the gayer flags of 
Pall Mall. It is 'Change time, and I am strangely among 
the Elgin marbles. It was no hyperbole when I ven- 
tured to cofiipare the change in my condition to a pass- 
ing into another world. Time stands still in a manner 
to me. I have lost all distinction of season. I do not 
know the day of the week or of the month. Each day 
used to be individually felt by me in its reference to the 
foreign post-days ; in its distance from, or propinquity 
to, the next Sunday. I had my Wednesday feelings, my 
Saturday night's sensations. The genius of each day 



80 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

was upon me distinctly during tlie whole of it, affecting 
my appetite, spirits, etc. The phantom of the next day, 
with the dreary five to follow, sat as a load upon my 
poor Sabbath recreations. What charm has washed that 
^Ethiop white? What is gone of Black Monday? All 
days are the same. Sunday itself — that unfortunate fail- 
ure of a holiday, as it too often proved, what with my 
sense of its fugitiveness, and over-care to get the greatest 
quantity of pleasure out of it —is melted down into a 
week-day. I can spare to go to church now, without 
grudging the huge cantle which it used to seem to cut 
out of the holiday. I have Time for everything. I can 
visit a sick friend. I can interrupt the man of much 
occupation when he is busiest. I can insult over him 
with an invitation to take a day's pleasure with me to 
Windsor this fine May morning. It is Lucretian pleasure! 
to behold the poor drudges, whom I have left behind iu 
the world, carking and caring; like horses in a mill, ^^ 
drudging on in the same eternal round. And what is it 
all for ? A man can never have too much Time to him- 
self, nor too little to do. Had I a little son, I would 
christen him Nothing-to-do ; he should do nothing. 
Man, I verily believe, is out of his element as long as he 
is operative. I am altogether for the life contemplative. 
Will no kindly earthquake come and swallow up those 
accursed cotton mills ? Take me that lumber of a desk 
there, and bowl it down 

As low as to the fiends. 

I am no longer . . . ., clerk to the Firm of, etc. I 
am Eetired Leisure. T am to be met with in trim gar- 
dens. I am already come to be known by my vacant 
t face and careless gesture, perambulating at no fixed pace. 



BARBARA g— o 8:1 

Bor with any settled purpose. I walk about, not to and 
from. They tell me a certain cum dignitate air, that has 
been buried so long with my other good parts, has begun 
to shoot forth in my person. I grow into gentility per- 
ceptibly. When I take up a newspaper, it is to read the 
state of the opera. Opus operatum est. I have done ail 
that I came into this world to do. I liave worked task" 
work, and have the rest of the day to myself. 



BARBARA S— . 

On the noon of the 14th of November, 1743 or '4, 
I forget which it was, just as the clook had struck one, 
Barbara S , with her accustomed punctuality, as- 
cended the long rambling staircase, w.th awkward inter- 
posed landing-places, which led to the office, or rather a 
sort of box with a desk in it, whereat sat the then Trea- 
surer of (what few of our readers may remember) the 
old Bath Theatre. All over the island it was the custom, 
and remains so I believe to this day, for the players to 
receive their weekly stipend on the Saturday. It was 
not much that Barbara had to claim. 

This little maid had just entered her eleventh year ; 
bat her important station at the theatre, as it seemed to 
her, with the benefits which she felt to accrue from her 
pious application of her small earnings, had given an air 
of womanhood to her steps and to her behavior. You 
would have taken her to have been at le9.st five years 
older. 

Till latterly she had rflerely been employed in cho- 

a 



82 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

ruses, or where children were wanted to fill np the 
scene. But the manager, observing a diligence and 
adroitness in her above her age, had for some few months 
past intrnsted to her the performance of whole parts. 
You may guess the self-consequence of the promotec 
Barbara. She had already drawn tears in young Ar- 
thur ; had rallied Eichard with infantine petulance in 
the Duke of York ; and in her turn had rebuked tnat 
petulance when she was Prince of "Wales. She would 
have done the elder child in Morton's pathetic afterpiece 
to the life ; but as yet " The Children in the Woods " 
was not. 

Long after this little girl was grown an aged woman, 
I have seen some of these small parts, each making two 
or three pages at most, copied out in the rudest hand of 
the then prompter, who doubtless transcribed a little 
more carefully and fairly for the grown-up tragedy ladies 
of the establishment. But such as they were, blotted 
and scrawled, as for a child's use, she kept them all ; and 
in the zenith of her after reputation it was a delightful 
sight to behold them bound up in costliest morocco, each 
single, each small part making a 'booTc — with fine clasps, 
gilt-splashed, etc. She had conscientiously kept them as: 
they had been delivered to her ; not a blot had been 
effaced or tampered with. They were precious to her 
for their affecting remembrancings. They were her 
principia, her rudiments ; the elementary atoms ; the lit- 
tle steps by which she pressed forward to perfection. 
" What," she would say, " could India-rubber, or a pum- 
ice-stone, have done for these darlings?" 

I am in no hurry to begin my story — indeed, I have 
little or none to tell — so I will just mention an observa- 
tion of hers connected with that interesting time. 



Bakbaka S- — .. 83 

Not long before she died I had been discoursing with 
her on the quantity of real present emotion which a great 
tragic performer experiences during acting. 1 ventured 
to think that, though in the first instance such phiyers 
must have possessed the feelings which they so power- 
fully called up in others, yet by frequent repetition those 
feelings must become deadened in great measure, and 
the performer trust to the memory of past emotion, 
rather than express a present one. She indignantly re- 
pelled the notion that, with a truly great tragedian, the 
operation by which such effects were produced upon an 
audience could ever degrade itself into what was purely 
mechanical. With much delicacy, avoiding to instance 
in her s^Z/'-experience, she told me that so long ago as 
when she used to play the part of the Little Son to Mrs. 
Porter's Isabella (I think it was), when that impressive 
actress had been bending over her in some heart-rending 
colloquy, she had felt real hot tears come trickling from 
her, which (to use her powerful expression) have per- 
fectly scalded her back. 

I am not quite so sure that it was Mrs. Porter, but it 
was some great actress of that day. The name is indif- 
ferent ; but the fact of the scalding tears I most distinct- 
ly remember. 

I was always fond of the society of players, and am 
not sure that an impediment in my speech (which cer- 
tainly kept me out of the pulpit), even more than certain 
personal disqualifications which are often got over in 
that professiun, did not prevent me at one time of life 
from adopting it. I have had the honor (I must ever 
call it) once to have been admitted to the tea-table of 
Miss Kelly. I have played at serious whist with Mr. 
Liston. I have chatted with ever good-humored Mrs- 



34 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELlA, 

Charles Kenible. I "have conversed as friend to fnend 
with her accomplished husband. I have been indulged 
with a classical conference with Macready ; and with a 
sight of the Player-picture gallery at Mr. Mathews's, 
Yv'hen the kind owner, to remunerate me for my love of 
the old actors (whom he loves so much), went over it 
with me, supplying to his capittd collection what alone the 
artist could not give them — voice, and their living mo- 
tion. Old tones, half faded, of Dodd, and Parsons, and 
Baddeley, have lived again for- me at his bidding. Only 
Edwdn he could not restore to me. I have supped with 
— but I am growing a coxcomb. 

As I was about to say — at the desk of the then trea- 
surer of the old Bath Theatre (not Diamond's) presented 
herself the little Barbara S . 

The parents of Barbara had been in reputable cir- 
cumstances. The father had practiced, I believe, as an 
apQthecary in the town. But his practice, from causes 
which I feel my own infirmity too sensibly that way to 
arraign — or perhaps from tliat pure infelicity which ac- 
companies some paople in their walk through hfe, and 
which it is impossible to lay at the door of imprudence 
— was now reduced to nothing. They were, in fact, in 
the very teeth of starvation, when the manager, who 
knew and respected them in better days, took the little 
Barbara into his company. 

At the period I commenced with, her slender earn- 
ings were the sole support of the family, including two 
younger sisters. I must throw a veil over some morti- 
fying circumstances. Enough to say that her Saturday's 
pittance was the only cliance of a Sunday's (generally 
their only) meal of meat. 

One thing I will only mention, that in some child's 




BARBARA S—- .. 85 

part, where in her theatrical character she was to sup 
off a roast fow> (O jov to Barbara !), some comic aotor.^ 
who was for the night caterer for this stage daintj, in 
the misguided humor of his part, threw over the dish 
such a quantity of salt (O grief and pain of iieart to Bar- 
bara !) that when she crammed a portion of it into her 
mouth she was obliged sputteringly to reject it ; and 
what with shame of her ill acted part, and pain of real 
appetite at missing such a daintj^, her little heart sobbed 
almost to breaking, till a flood of tears, Avhich the well- 
fed spectators were totally unable to comprehend, mer- 
cifully relieved her. 

This was the little starved, meritorious maid, who 
stood before old Ravenscroft, the treasurer, for her Sat- 
urday's payment. 

Ravenscroft was a man, I have heard many old theat 
rical people besides herself say, of all men least calcu- 
lated for a treasurer. He had no head for accounts, 
paid away at random, kept scarce any books, and, sum- 
ming up at the week's end, if he found himself a pound 
or so deficient, blest himself that it was no worse. 

Now Barbara's weekly stipend was a bare half guinea. 
By mistake he popped into her hand a whole one. 

Barbara tripped away. 

She was entirely unconscious at first of the mis- 
take ; God knows, Ravenscroft would never have dis- 
covered it. 

But when she had got down to the first of those un- 
couth landing-places, she became sensible of an unusual 
weight of metal pressing her little hand. 

Now mark the dilemma. 

She was by nature a good child., From her parents 
and those about her she had imbibed no contrary infli. 



86 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

ence. Bat then they had taught her nothing. Poor 
men's smoky cabins are not always porMcoes of moral 
philosophy. This little maid liad no instinct to evil, hut 
then slie might be said to have no fixed principle. She 
had heard honesty commended, but never dreamed of 
its application to herself. She thought of it as some- 
thing which concerned grown-up people — men and wo- 
nen. She had never known temptation, or thought of 
preparing resistance against it. 

Her first impulse was to go hack to the old treasurer^ 
and explain to him his blunder. He was already so con- 
fused with age, besides a natural want of punctuality, 
that she would have had some difiiculty in makiag him 
understand it. She saw that in an instant. And then it 
was such a bit of money! and then the image of a larger 
allowance of butcher's meat on their table next day came 
across her, till her little eyes glistened, and her mouth 
moistened. But then Mr. Kavenscroft had always been 
so good-natured, had stood her friend behind the scenes, 
and even recommended her ])romotion to some of her 
little parts. But again the old man was reputed to be 
worth a world of money. He was supposed to have 
fifty pounds a year clear of the theatre. And then came 
staring upon her the figures of her little stockingless and 
shoeless sisters. And then she looked at her own neat 
white cotton stockings, which her situation at the thea- 
tre had made it indispensable for her mother to provide 
for her, with hard straining and pinching from the fami- 
ly stock, and thought how glad she should be to cover 
their poor feet with the same, and how then they could 
accompany her to rehearsals, which they had hitherto 
been precluded from doing by reason of their unfashion- 
able attire. In these thoughts she reached the second 



BARBARA S . 87 

lasiding-place — the second, I roean, from the top—for 
there was still another left to traverse. 

Now virtue support Barbara ! 

And that never-failing friend did step in ; for at that 
moment a strength not her own, I have heard her say, 
was revealed to her — a reason above reasoning — and 
without her own agency, as it seemed (for she never felt 
her feet to move), she found herself transported back to 
the individual desk she had just quitted, and her hand 
in the old hand of Eavenscroft, who in silence took back 
the refunded treasure, and who had been sitting (good 
man) insensible to the lapse of minutes, which to her 
were anxious ages, and from that moment a deep peace 
fell upon her heart, and she knew the quality of hon- 
esty. 

A year or two's unrepining application to her profes- 
sion brightened up the feet and the prospects of her lit- 
tle sisters, set the whole family upon their legs again, 
and released her from the difficulty of discussing moral 
dogmas upon a landing-place. 

I have heard her say that it was a surprise, not much 
;5hort of mortification to her, to see the coolness with 
which the old man pocketed the difference, which had 
caused hbf such mortal throes. 

This anecdote of herself I had in the year 1800, from 
the mouth of the late Mrs. Crawford,* then sixty-seven 
years of age (she died soon after) ; and to her struggles 
upon this childish occasion I have sometimes ventured 
to think her indebted for that power of rending the 

* The maiden name of this lady was Street, which she 
changed by successive marriages, for those of Dancer, Barry, 
and Crawford. She was Mrs. Crawfordj a third time a widow, 
when I knew her. 



88 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

heart in the representation of conflicting emotions, for 
which in after-years she was considered as little inferior 
(if at ail so in the part of Lady Eandolph) even to Mrs. 
Siddonso 



THE TOMBS m THE ABBEY. 

IN A LETTEE TO R 8 , ESQ. 

Though in some points of doctrine, and perhaps of 
discipline, I am diffident of lending a perfect assent to 
that church which you have so worthily Mstorijied^ yet 
may the ill time never come to me, when with a chilled 
heart or a portion of irreverent sentiment I shall enter 
her beautiful and time-hallowed edifices. Judge then 
of my mortification when, after attending the choral 
anthems of last Wednesday at Westminster, and being 
desirous of renewing my acquaintance, after lapsed years, 
with the tombs and antiquities there, I found myself 
excluded — turned out like a dog, or some profane person, 
into the common street, with feelings not very conge- 
nial to the place, or to the solemn service which I had 
been listening to. It was ajar after that music. 

You had your education at Westminster ; and doubt- 
less among those dim aisles and cloisters you must have 
gathered much of that devotional feeling in those young 
years, on which your purest mind feeds still — and may 
it feed ! The antiquarian spirit, strong in you, and 
gracefully blending ever with the religious, may have 
been sown in you among those wrecks of splendid mor- 
tality. You owe it to the place of your education, you 
owe it to your learned fondness for the architecture of 



THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY. 89 

yonr ancestors, yoii owe it to the venerableness of your 
ecclesiastical establishment, which is daily lessened and 
called in question through these practices, to speak aloud 
your sense of them ; never to desist raising your voice 
against them till they be totally done away with and 
abolished ; till the doors of Westminster Abbey be no 
longer closed against the decent, though low-in-purse, 
enthusiast, or blameless devotee, who must commit an 
injury against his family economy if he would be indulged 
with a bare admission within its walls. You owe it to 
the decencies which you wish to see maintained in its 
impressive services, that our Cathedral be no longer an 
object of inspection to the poor at those times only in 
which they must rob from tlieir attendance on the wor- 
ship every minute which they can bestow upon the 
fabric. In vain the public prints have taken up this 
subject ; in vain such poor nameless writers as myself 
express tlieir indignation. A word from you, sir — a 
hint in your Journal — would be sufficient to fling open 
the doors of the Beautiful Temple again, as we can re- 
member them when we were boys. At that time c 1 
life, what would the imaginative 'acuity (such as it is) in 
both of us have suffered, if the entrance to so much 
reflection had been obstructed by the demand of so much 
silver ! If we had scraped it up to gain an occasional 
admission (as we certainly should have done), would the 
sight of those old tombs have been as impressive to us 
(while we have been weighing anxiously prudence against 
sentiment) as when the gates stood open as those of the 
adjacent Park ; when we could walk in at any time, as 
the mood brought us, for a shorter or longer time, as 
that lasted ? Is the being shown over a place the same 
as silently for ourselves detectmg the genius of it ? 



90 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

In no part of our beloved Abbey now can a pers^ , 
find entrance (out of service time) under the sum aJ 
two shiUirogs. Tlie rich and tlie great will smile at the 
anti-climax presumed to lie in these two short words. 
But you can cell them, sir, how much quiet worth, how 
much capjicicy for enlarged feeling, how much taste 
and genius may coexist, especially in youth, with a 
purse incompetent to this demand. A respected friend 
of ours, durins: his late visit to the metropolis, presented 
himself for admission to St. Paul's. At the same time a 
decently clothed man, with as decent a wife and child, 
were bargainmg for the same indulgence. The price 
was only twopence each person. The poor but decent 
man hesitated, desirous to go in ; but there were three 
of them, and he turned away reluctantly. Perhjips he 
wished to see the tomb of Nelson. Perhaps the Inte- 
rior of the Cathedral was his object. But in the state 
of his finances, even sixpence might reasonably seem too 
much. Tell the A ristocracy of the country (no man can 
do it more impressively) ; instruct them of what value 
hese insignificant pieces of money, these minims to their 
sight, may be to their humbler brethren. Shame these 
Sellers out of the Temple. Stifle not the suggestions of 
your better nature with the pretext that an indiscrimi- 
nate admission would expose the Tombs to violation. 
Remember your boy-days. Did you ever see or hear of 
a mob in the Abbey while it was free to all? Do the 
rabble come there, or trouble their heads about such 
speculations ? It is all that yon can do to drive them 
into your churches ; they do not voluntarily offer them- 
selves. They have, alas ! no passion for antiquities ; for 
tomb of king or prelate, sage or poet. If they had, they 
would be no longer the rabble. 



AMICUS REDIVIVUS. ^ 9i 

For forty years that I have known the fabric, the 
only well-attested charge of violation adduced has been 
a ridiculous dismemberment committed upon the effig.v 
of that amiable spy, Major Andre. And is it for this — 
the wanton mischief of some schoolboy, fired perhap.'^ 
with raw notions of Transatlantic Freedom — or the re- 
mote possibility of such a mischief occurring again, sg 
easily to be prevented by stationing a constable withip 
the walls, if the vergers ere incompetent for the duty — 
is it upon such wretched pretenses that the people of 
England are made to pay a new Peter's Pence so long 
abrogated, or must content themselves with contemplat- 
ing the ragged exterior of their Cathedral? The mis- 
chief was done about the time that you were a scholar 
there. Do you know anything about the unfortunate 
relic ? 



AMICUS REDIVIVUS. 

Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep 
Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas ? 

I DO not know when I have experienced a vstranger 
•ensation than on seeing my old friend G. D., who had. 
been paying me a morning visit a few Sundays back, at 
my cottage at Islington, upon taking leave, instead of 
turning down the right-hand path by which he had en= 
tered, with staff in liand, and at noonday, deliberately 
march right forward into the midst of the stream that 
runs by us, and totally disappear, 

A spectacle like this at dusk would have been appaU- 
ing enough ; but in the broad open daylight, to witneisss 



92 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

such an unreserved motion toward self-destruction in a 
valued friend, took from me all power of speculation. 

How I found my feet I know not. Consciousness 
was quite gone. Some spirit, not my own, whirled me 
to the spot. I remember nothing but the silvery appa- 
rition of a good white head emerging; nigh which a staff 
(the hand unseen that wielded it) pointed upward, as 
feeling for the skies. In a moment (if time was in that 
time) he was on my shoulders, and I — freighted with a 
load more precious than his who bore Anchises. 

And here I can not but do justice to the officious zeal 
of sundry passers-by, who, albeit arriving a little too 
late to participate in the honors of the rescue, in phil- 
anthropic shoals came thronging to communicate their 
advice as to the recovery ; prescribing variously the ap- 
plication, or non-appUcation, of salt, etc., to the person of 
the patient. Life meantime was ebbing fast away, amidst 
the stifle of conflicting judgments, when one, more saga- 
cious than the rest, by a bright thought, proposed send- 
ing for the Doctor. Trite as the counsel was, and impos- 
sible, as one should think, to be missed on — shall I con- 
fess ? — in this emergency it was to me as if an Angel 
had spoken. Great previous exertions — and mine had 
not been inconsiderable— are commonly followed by a 
debility of purpose. This was a moment of irresolution. 

MoNOOULTjs — for so, in default of catching his true 
name, I choose to designate the medical gentleman who 
now appeared — is a grave, middle-aged person, who, 
without having studied at the college, or truckled to the 
pedantry of a diploma, hath employed a great portion of 
his valuable time in experimental processes upon the 
bodies of unfortunate fellow-creatures, in whom the vital 
spark, to mere vulgar thinking, would seem extinct and 



AMictrs REDIVlVtTS. 93 

lost for ever. He omitted no occasion of obtruding his 
services, from a case of common surfeit suffocation to 
the ignobler obstructions sometimes induced by a too 
willful application of the plant Cannabis outwardly. But 
though he declineth not altogether these drier extinc- 
tions, his occupation tendeth, for the most part, to water^ 
practice ; for the convenience of which he hath judi- 
ciously fixed his quarters near the grand repository of the 
stream mentioned, where day and night, from his little 
watch-tcwer, at the Middleton's Head, he listeneth to 
detect the wrecks of drowned mortality — partly, as he 
saith, to be upon the spot, and partly because the liquids 
which he useth to prescribe to himself, and his patients, 
on these distressing occasions, are ordinarily more con- 
veniently to be found at these common hostelries than in 
the shops and phials of the apothecaries. His ear hath 
arrived to such finesse by practice, that it is reported he 
can distinguish a plunge at a half furlong distance, and 
can tell if it be casual or deliberate. He weareth a 
medal, suspended over a suit originally of a sad brown, 
but which, by time and frequency of nightly divings, has 
been dinged into a true professional sable. He passeth 
by the name of Doctor, and is remarkable for wanting 
his left eye. His remedy — after a sufficient application 
of warm blankets, friction, etc. — is a simple tumbler or 
more of the purest Cognac, with water, made as hot as 
the convalescent can bear it. Where he findeth, as in 
the case of my friend, a squeamish subject, he conde- 
scendeth to be the taster; and showeth, by his own 
example, the innocuous nature of the prescription. No- 
thing can be more kind or encouraging than this proce- 
dure. It addeth confidence to the patient to see his med- 
ical adviser go hand in hand with himself in the remedy. 



04 f HE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

When the doctor swalloweth his own draught, wlia^ 
peevish invalid can refuse to pledge him in the potion ? 
In fine, Monooulfs is a humane, sensible man, who, foi 
slender pittance, scarce enough to sustain life, is content 
to wear it out in the endeavor to save the lives of others 
— his pretensions so moderate, that with difficulty 1 
could press a crown upon him, for the price of restoring 
the existence of such an invaluable creature to society 
afi G. D. 

It was pleasant to observe the effect of the subsiding 
alarm upon the nerves of the dear absentee. It seemed 
to have given a shake to memory, calling up notice after 
notice of all the providential deliverances he had expe- 
rienced in the course of his long and innocent life. Sit- 
ting up in my couch — my couch which, naked and void 
of furniture hitherto, for the salutary repose which it 
administered shall be honored with costly valance, at 
some price, and henceforth to be a state-bed at Cole- 
brook — ^lie discoursed of marvelous escapes — by careless- 
ness of nurses — by pails of gelid and kettles of the boil- 
ing element, in infancy — by orchard pranks, and snap- 
ping twigs in schoolboy frolics — by descent of tiles at 
Trumpington, and of heavier tomes at Pembroke — by 
studious watchings, inducing frightful vigilance — by want 
and the fear of want, and all the sore throbbings of the 
learned. Anon he would burst out into little fragments 
of chanting — of songs long ago — ends of deliverance 
hymns, not remembered before since childhood, but 
coming up now, when his heart was made tender as a 
child's ; for the tremor cordis^ in the retrospect of a 
recent deliverance, as in a case of impending danger, 
acting upon an innocent heart, will produce a self-ten- 
Ae^uess. which we should do ill to christen cowardice j 



AMICUS REDIVIVUS. 95 

and Shakespeare, in the latter crisis, has made his good 
Sir Hugh to remember the sitting by Babylou, and to 
mutter of shallow rivers. 

Waters of bn- Hugh Myddelton, what a spark you 
were like to have extinguished for ever! Your salu- 
brious streams to this City, for now near two centuries, 
would hardly have atoned for what you were in a mo= 
ment washing away. Mockery of a river— liquid arti= 
fice, wretched conduit ! henceforth rank with canals and 
sluggish aqueducts. Was it for this that, smit in boy^ 
hood with the explorations of that Abyssinian traveler, 
I paced the vales of Am well to explore your tributary 
springs, to trace your salutary waters sparkling through 
green Hertfordshire, and cultured Enfield parks? Ye 
have no swans, no Naiads, no Eiver God ; or did the 
benevolent hoary aspect of my friend tempt ye to suck 
him in, that ye also might have the tutelary genius of 
your waters ? 

Had he been drowned in Cam there would have been 
some consonancy in it ; but what wiUows had ye to wave 
and rustle over his moist sepulture ? or, having no name, 
besides that unmeaning assumption of eternal novity, did 
ye think to get one by the noble prize, and henceforth 
to be termed the Stream Dyerian ? 

And couM such spacious virtue find a grave 
Beneath the imposthumed bubble of a wave ? 

I protest, George, you shall not venture out again— 
no, not by daylight— without a sufficient pair of specta- 
cles—in your musing moods especially. Your absence of 
mind we have borne, till your presence of body came to 
be called in question by it. You shall not go wandering 
into Euripus with Aristotle if wa can heln it. Fia. man. 



96 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

t© turn dipper at your years, after your many tracts id 
favor of spriDkling only ! 

I have nothing but water in my head o' nights since 
this frightful accident. Sometimes I am with Clarence 
in his dream. At others, I behold Christian beginning 
to sink, and crying out to his good brother Hopeful 
(that is, to me), " I sink in deep waters ; the billows go 
over my head, all the waves go over me. Selah." Tlien 
I have before me Palinurus, just letting go the steerage, 
I cry out too late to save. Next follow — a mournful 
procession — suicidal faces^ saved against their will from 
drowning ; dolefully trailing a length of reluctant grate- 
fulness, with ropy weeds pendent from locks of watchet 
hue — constrained Lazari — Pluto's half-subjects — stolen 
fees from the grave — bilking Charon of his fare. At 
their head Arion — or is it G. D. ? — in his singing gar- 
ments march eth singly, with harp in hand, and votive 
garland, which Machaon (or Dr. Hawes) snatcheth 
straight, intending to suspend it to the stern God of 
Sea. Then follow dismal streams of Lethe, in which the 
half-drenched on earth are constrained to drown down- 
right, by wharfs where Ophelia twice acts her muddy 
death. 

And, doubtless, there is some notice in that invisible 
world, when one of us ap{)roacheth Ois my friend did so 
lately) to their inexorable precincts. When a soul knocks 
once, twice, at death's door, the sensation aroused Avith- 
in the place must be considerable ; ai;d the grim Feature, 
by modern science so often disposse^-sed of his prey, must 
have learned by this time to pity Tantalus. 

A pulse assuredly was felt alo^o- the line of the Ely- 
elan shades, when thenear arjiv*^' of G. D. was announced 
by no equivocal indications. '*' m their seats of Aspho 



NUGJ3 CRITIC^. O-J 

del arose the gentler and the graver ghosts — poet, or 
historian — of Grecian or of Roman lore — to crown with 
unfading chaplets the half-finished love-labors of their 
unwearied scholiast. Him Markland expected ; him Tyr- 
whitt hoped to encounter ; him the sweet lyrist of Petar 
House, whom he had barely seen iipon earth,* with new- 
est airs prepared to greet; and, patron of the gentle 
Christ's boy — who should have been his patron through 
life — the mild Askew, with longing aspirations, leaned 
foremost from his venerable j3])sculapian chair, to wel- 
come into that happy country the matured virtues of the 
man, whose tender scions in the boy he himself upon the 
earth had so prophetically fed and watered. 



nugtE critics. 

DEFENSE OF THE SONNETS OF SIB PHILIP SYDNEY. 

Sydney's Sonnets — I speak of the best of them — are 
among the very best of their sort. They fall below the 
plain moral dignity, the sanctity, and high yet modest 
spirit of self-approval, of Milton, in his compositions of 
a similar structure. They are in truth what Milton, cen- 
suring the " Arcadia," says of that work (to which they 
are a sort of after-tune or application), " vain and ama- 
torious enough, yet the things in their kind (as he con- 
fesses to be true of the romance) may be full of worth 
and wit." They savor of the Courtier, it must be al- 
lowed, and not of the Commonwealthsman. But Milton 
was a Courtier when he wrote the " Masque " at Ludlow 

* Graium tantum vidit. 

7 



98 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

Castle, and still more a Courtier when he composed th© 
"Arcades." When tlie national struggle was to begin, 
he becomingly cast these vanities behind him ; and if 
the order of time had thrown Sir Philip upon the crisis 
which preceded the Kevolution, there is no reason why- 
he should not have acted the same part in that emergency 
whi^ has glorified the name of a later Sydney. He did 
not want for plainness or boldness of spirit. His letter 
on the French match may testify he could speak his mind 
freely to Princes. The times did not call him to the 
scaffold. 

The sonnets which we oftenest call to mind of Mil- 
ton were the compositions of his maturest years. Those 
of Sydney, which I am about to produce, were written 
in the very heyday of his blood. They are stuck full 
of amorous fancies — far-fetched conceits, befitting Ms 
occupation ; for True Love thinks no labor to send out 
Thoughts upon vast, and more than Indian voyages, to 
bring home rich pearls, outlandish wealth, gums, jewels. 
spicery, to sacrifice in self-depreciating similitudes, as 
shadows of true amiabilities in the Beloved. We must 
be Lovers — or at least the cooling touch of time, the 
circum prcecordia frigus^ must not have so damped our 
faculties as to take away our recollection that we were 
once so — before we can duly appreciate the glorious 
vanities and graceful hyperboles of the passion. The 
images which lie before our feet (though by some ac- 
counted the only natural) are least natural for the high 
Sydnean love to express its fancies by. They may serve 
for the loves of Catullus, or the dear Author of the 
*' Schoolmistress " ; for passions that creep and whine 
in Elegies and Pastoral Ballads. I am sure Milton never 
loved at this rate. I am afraid some of his addresses 



NITG^ CRITICJS. 99 

{etd Leonoram I mean) have rather erred on the farther 
side ; and that the poet came not much short of a reli- 
gious indecorum, when he could thus apostrophize a 
singing-girl : 

Angelus unicuique suns {sic crediie gentes) 

Ohtigit cetTiereis ales ah ordinihus. 
Quid mirum, Leonora, iibi si gloria major^ 

Nam tua prcesentem vox sonat ipsa Deum ? 
Aut Deus, aut vacui certe mens tertia coeli, 

Per tua secretd gutlura serpit agens ; 
Serpit agens, facilisque docet m.ortalia corda 

Sensim immortali assuescere posse sono. 
Quod si cuncta quidem Deus est, per cunctaque fusus, 
In te una loquitur, cetera mutus habet. 

This is loving in a strange fashion ; and it requires 
some candor of construction (besides the slight darken- 
ing of a dead language) to cast a veil over the ugly ap- 
pearance of something very like blasphemy in the last 
two verses. I think the Lover would have been stag- 
gered if he had gone about to express the same thought 
in English. I am sure Sydney has no flights like this. 
His extravaganzas do not strike at the sky, though he 
takes leave to adopt the pale Dian into a fellowship with 
his mortal passions. 



With how sad step3, Moon, thou climb'st the skies ; 

How silently, and with how wan a face ! 

What ! may it be, that even in heavenly place 

That busy Archer his sharp arrows tries ? 

Sure, if that long-with-love-acquainted eyes 

Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case ; 

I read it in thy looks ; thy languisht grace 



100 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

To mc, lliat feel the like, tli}- state descries. 

Then, even of lellovvship, Moon, tell me, 

Is constant love deemed there but Tvant of wit ? 

Are beauties there as proud as here they be ? 

Do they above love to be loved, and yet 

Those lovers scorn v^^hom that love doth possess f 

Do they call virtue there — ungratefulness ? 

The last line of this poem is a little obsciirc-d by trans- 
position. He means, Do they call ungratefulness there a 
virtue ? 

IL 

Come, Sleep, Sleep, the certain knot of peace, 

i The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe, 
I The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release, 
iThe indifferent judge between the high and low ; 
; With shield of proof shield me from out the presise* 
Of those fierce darts despair at me doth throw ; 

make in me those civil wars to cease ; 

1 will good tribute pay, if thou do so. 

Take thou of me sweet pillows, sweetest bed ; 
A chamber deaf to noise, and blind to light ; 
A rosy garland, and a weary head. 
And if these things, as being thine by right, 
Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me, 
Livelier than elsewhere, Stella's image see. 

III. 

The curious wits, seeing dull pensivenefls 
Bewray itself in my long-settled eyes. 
Whence those same fumes of meloneholy ri8e, 
With idle pains, and missing aim, do guess. 
Some, that know how my spring I did addresii, 

* Press. 



NUGJE CRITICS. 101 

Deem that my Muse some fruit of knowledge plies ; 
Others, because the Prince my service tries, 
Think that I thinlc state errors to redress ; 
But harder judges judge, ambition's rage, 
Scourge of itself, still climbing slippery place, 
Holds my young brain captived in golden cage, 
foois, or otherwise ! alas, the race 
Of all my thoughts hath neither stop nor start, 
But only Stella's eyes, and Stella's heart. 

XV. 

Because I oft in dark abstracted guise 

Seem most alone in greatest company. 

With dearth of words or answers quite awry 

To them that would make speech of speech arise ; 

They deem, and of their doom the rumor flies, 

That poison foul of bubbling Pride doth lie 

So in my swelling breast, that only I 

Fawn on myself, and others do despise. 

Yet Fride, I think, doth not my soul possess. 

Which looks too oft in his unflattering glass ; 

But one worse fault — Ambition — I confess. 

That makes me oft my best friends overpass. 

Unseen, unheard — while Thought to highest plac* 

Bends all his powers, even unto Stella's grace, 

V. 

Having this day my horse, my hand, my lance, 

Guided so well that I obtained the prize. 

Both by the judgment of the English eyes. 

And of some sent from that sweet enemy , France; 

Horsemen my skill in horsemanship advance ; 

Townsfolk my strength ; a daintier judge applies 

Eis praise to sleight, which from good use dotb ri^e\ 



102 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

Some lucky wits impute it but to chance ; 
Others, because of both sides I do take 
My blood from them, who did excel in this, 
Think Nature me a man of arms did make. 
How far they shot awry ! the true cause is, 
Stella looked on, and from her heavenly face 
Sent forth the beams which made so fair my race. 

VI. 

In martial sports I had my cunning tried, 

And yet to break more staves did me address, 

While with the people's shouts (I must confess) 

Youth, luck, and praise even filled my veins with pride — 

When Cupid having me (his slave) descried 

In Mars's livery, prancing in the press, 

" What now, Sir Fool ! " said he : "I would no less. 

Look here, I say." I look'd, and Stella spied, 

Who, hard by, made a window send forth light. 

My heart then quak'd, then dazzled were mine eyes ; 

One hand forgat to rule, th' other to fight ; 

Nor trumpet's sound I heard, nor friendly cries. 

My foe came on, and beat the air for me. 

Till that her blush made me my shame to see. 

VII. 

No more, my dear, no more these counsels try, 

give my passions leave to run their race ; 
Let Fortune lay on me her worst disgrace ; 

Let folk o'ercharged with brain against me cry ; 
Let clouds bedim my face, break in mine eye ; 
Let me no steps, but of lost labor, trace ; 
Let all the earth with scorn recount my case. 
But do not will me from my love to fly. 

1 do not envy Aristotle's wit, 



NUG^ CRITICS. lOS 

NTor do aspire to Caesar's bleeding fame ; 
N^or aught do care, though some above me sit| 
tfor hope, nor wish, another course to frame, 
But that which once may win thy cruel heart. 
Thou art my wit, and thou my virtue art. 

VIII. 

Love still a boy, and oft a wanton, is, 

SchooFd only by his mother's tender eye. 

What wonder, then, if he his lesson miss. 

When for so soft a rod dear play he try ? 

And yet my Star, because a sugar'd kiss 

In sport I suck'd, while she asleep did lie, 

Doth lour, nay, chide, nay, threat, for only this. 

Sweet, it was saucy Love, not humble L 

But no 'scuse serves ; she makes her wrath appear 

In beauty's throne : see, now, who dares come near 

Those scarlet judges, threat'ning bloody pain '? 

heav'nly Fool, thy most kiss-worthy face 
Anger invests with such a lovely grace, 
That Anger's self I needs must kiss again. 

IX. 

1 never drank of Aganippe well, 
Nor ever did in shade of Tempo sit, 

And Muses scorn with vulgar brains to dwell s 

Poor lay-man I, for sacred rites unfit. 

Some do I hear of Poet's fury tell, 

But (God wot) wot not what they mean by it j 

And this I swear by blackest brook of hell, 

I am no pick-purse of another's wit. 

How falls it then, that with so smooth an ease 

My thoughts I speak, and what I speak doth flow 

In verse, and that my verse best wits doth please f 



1()4 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

Guess me the cause. What, is it thus ? Fie, no. 
Or so ? Much less. How then ? Sure thus it ia; 
My lips are sweet, inspired with Stella's kiss. 

X. 

Of all the kings that ever here did reign, 
Edward, named Fourth, as first in praise I name. 
Not for his fair outside, nor well-lined brain — 
Although less gifts imp feathers oft on Fame ; 
Nor that he could, young-wise, wise-valiant, frame 
His sire's revenge, joined with a kingdom's gain, 
And, gained by Mars, could yet mad Mars so tam^ 
That Balance weigh'd what Sword did late obtain ; 
Nor that he made the Floure-de-luce so 'fraid, 
Though strongly hedged of bloody Lions' paws, 
That witty Lewis to him a tribute paid ; 
Nor this, nor that, nor any such small cause- 
But only, fur this worthy knight durst prove 
To lose his crown rather than fail his love. 

XI. 

happy Thames, that didst my Stella bear, 

1 saw thyself, with many a smiling line 
Upon thy cheerful face, Joy's livery wear, 

While those fair planets on thy streams did shine; 
The boat for joy could not to dance forbear, 
While wanton winds, with beauty so divine 
Ravish'd, stay'd not, till in her golden hair 
They did themselves (0 sweetest prison) twine. 
And fain those ^ol's youth there would their stay 
Have made ; but, forced by nature still to fly. 
First did with pufFmg kiss those locks display. 
She, so dishevel'd, blush'd ; from window I 
With sight thereof cried out, fair disgrace, 
Let honor's self to thee grant highest place ! 




NUG.ZE CRITICS. 



XII. 

Highway, since you my chief Parnassus be, 

And that my Muse, to some ears not unsweet^ 

Tempers her words to tramjDling horses' feet, 

More soft than to a chamber melody — 

Now blessed You bear onward blessed Me 

To Her, where I my heart safe left shall meet. 

My Muse and I must you of duty greet 

With thanks and wishes, wishing thankfully, 

Be you still fair, honor'd by pubhc heed, 

By no encroachment wrong'd, nor time forgot ; 

Nor blamed for blood, nor shamed for sinful deed ; 

And that you know I envy you no lot 

Of highest wish, I wish you so much bliss, 

Hundreds of years you Stella's feet may kiss. 

Of the foregoing, the first, the second, and the last 
sonnet are my favorites. But the general beauty of 
them all is, that they are so perfectly characteristical. 
The spirit of " learning and of chivalry " — of which 
union Spenser has entitled Sydney to have been the 
" president "—shines through them. I confess I can 
see nothing of the " jejune " or " frigid " in them—much 
less of the "stiff" and " cumbrous " — which I have 
sometimes heard objected to the " Arcadia." The verse 
runs off swiftly and gallantly. It might have been tuned 
to the trumpet, or tempered (as himself expresses it) to 
■''trampling horses' feet." They abound in felicitous 
phrases : 

heav'nly Fool, thy most kiss-wortby face— 

Eighth Sonnet. 
.... sweet pillows, sweetest bed ; 

A chamber deaf to noise, and blind to light ; 
A rosy garland, and a weary head„ 

Second .Sonnetf 



n 



106 THE LAST E^vSAYS OF ELIA, 

. , . that sweet enemy, France— 

Fifth Sonmje, 

But tbey are not rich in words only of vagup and 
uclocalized feelings — the failing too mucli of some poe- 
try of the present day ; they are full, material, and cir- 
cumstantiated. Time and place appropriate every one 
of them. It is not a fever of passion wasting itseif upon 
a thin diet of dainty words,* but a transcendent passion 
pervading and illuminating action, pursuits, studies, feats 
of arras, the opinions of contemporaries and his judg- 
ment of them. An historical thread runs through them 
which almost affixes a date to them — marks the when and 
where they were written. 

* A profusion of verbal dainties, with a disproportionate lack 
ot matter and circumstances, is, I think, one reason of the. cold- 
ness with which the public has received the poetry of a noble- 
man now living, which, upon the score of exquisite diction alone, 
is entitled to something better than neglect. I venture to copy 
one of his sonnets in this place, which, for quiet sweetness and 
unafi'ected morality, has scarcely its parallel in our language. 

Tg A Bird that Haunted the Watees of Lacken in thf 

Winter. 

By Lord Thurlmo. 

me/ancholy bird, a winter's day 
Thou standest by the margin of the pool, 
And, taught by &od, dost thy whole being school 
To patience, which all evil can allay. 
God has appointed thee the fish thy prey, 
And given thyself a lesson to the fool 
Unthrifty, to "submit to moral rule, 
And his unthinking course by thee to weigh. 
There need not schools, nor a professor's chair, 
Though these be good, true wisdom to impart. 
He who has not enough, for these, to spare 
Of time or gold, may yet amend his heart, 
And teach his soul, by brooks and rivers fair; 
Nature is always wise in every part. 



NUGyE CRITICS. 107 

I bave dwelt the longer upon what I conceive tne 
merit of these poems, because I have been hurt by the 
wantonness (I wish I could treat it by a gentler name) 
with which a favorite critic of our day tal^es every occa- 
sion of insulting the memory of Sir Philip Sydney. But 
the decisions of the author of " Table Talk," etc. (most 
profoimd and subtle where they are, as for the most part^ 
Just), are more safely to be relied upon, on subjects and 
authors he has a partiality for, than on such as he has 
conceived an accidental prejudice against. Milton wrote 
sonnets, and was a king-hater ; and it was congenial 
perhaps to sacrifice a courtier to a patrioto But I was 
unwilling to lose a fine idea from my mind. The noble 
images, passions, sentiments, and poetical delicacies of 
character, scattered all over the " Arcadia " (spite of 
S')me stiftness and encumberment), justify to me the 
character which his contemporaries have left us of the 
writer. I can not think, with Mr. Hazlitt, that Sir Philip 
Sydney was that opprobrious thing which a foolish noble- 
man in his insolent hostility chose to term him. I call 
to mind the epitaph made on him by Lord Brooke, to 
guide me to juster thoughts of him ; and I repose upon 
the beautiful lines in the " Friend's Passion for his As- 
trophel," printed with the Elegies of Spenser and others: 

You knew — who knew not Astrophel ? 

(That I should live to say I knew, 

And have not in possession still !) — 

Things known permit me to renew. 
Of him, you know his merit such, 
I can not say — you hear — too muck. 

Within these woods of Arcady 
He chief delight and pleasure took | 



108 



THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 



And on the mountain Partheny, 

Upon the crystal liquid brook, 
The Muses met him every day, 
That taught him sing, to write, and a%f^ 

When he descended down the mount, 
His personage seemed most divine : 
A thousand graces one might count 
Upon his lovely, cheerful eyne. 

To hear him speak, and sweetly smil4^ 
You were in paradise the while. 

A sweet attractive kind of grace ; 

A full assurance given by looks ; 

Continual comfort in a face. 

The lineaments of Gospel hooks— 
I trow that count'nance can not lie, 
Whose thoughts are legible in the eye, 



Above all others, this is he 
Which erst approved in his song 
That love and honor might agree, 
And that pure love will do no wrong. 

Sweet saints, it is no sin or blame 

To love a man of virtuous name. 

Did never love so sweetly breathe 

In any mortal breast before : 

Did never muse inspire beneath 

A poet's brain with finer store. 

He wrote of love with high conceit, 
And Beauty rear'd above her height. 

Or let any one read the deeper sorrows (grief running 
into rage) in the poem — the last in the collection accom- 
panying the above — which from internal testimony I 
believe to be Lord Brooke's — beginning with " Silence 



NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. <J9 

aiigmenteth grief," and then seriously ask himself whtjth- 
er the subject of such absorbing and confounding regrets 
could have been that thing which Lord Oxford termed 
him. 



NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 

Dan Stctaet once told us that he did not remember 
ti^at he ever deliberately walked into the Exhibition at 
Somerset House in his life. He might occasionally have 
escorted a party of ladies across the way that were going 
in ; but he never went in of his own head. Yet the 
office of the "Morning Post" newspaper stood then just 
where it does now — we are carrying you back, reader, 
some thirty years or more — with its gilt-globe-topt front 
facing that emporium of our artists' grand Annual Ex- 
posure. We sometimes wish that we had observed the 
same abstinence with Daniel. 

A word or two of D. S. He ever appeared to us one 
of the finest-tempered of editors. Perry, of the *' Morn- 
ing Chronicle," was equally pleasant, with a dash, no 
slight one either, of ths courtier. S. was frank, plain, 
and English all over. We have worked for both these 
gentlemen 

It is soothing to contemplate the head of the Ganges ; 
to trace the first little bubblings of a mighty river ; 

With holy reverence to approach the rocks, 
Whence glide the streams renowned in ancient song. 

Fired with a perusal of the Abyssinian Pilgrim's 
exploratory rambhngs after the cradle of the infant 



110 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

Nilus, we well remember on one fine summer holiday 
(a " whole day's leave " we called it at Christ's Hospital) 
sallying forth at rise of sun, not very well provisioned 
either for such an undertaking, to trace the current of 
the New River — Myddeltonian stream ! — to its scaturient 
source, as we had read, in meadows by fair Amwell, 
Gallantly did we commence our solitary quest; for it 
was essential to the dignity of a Disooveey that no eye 
of school-boy, save our own, should beam on the detec- 
tion. By flowery spots, and verdant lanes skirting Horn- 
sey, Hope trained us on in many a baffling turn — end- 
less, hopeless meanders, as it seemed, or as if the jealous 
waters had dodged us, reluctant to have the humble spot 
of their nativity revealed — till, spent and nigh famished 
before set of the same sun, we sat down somewhere by 
Bowes Farm, near Tottenham, with a tithe of our pro- 
posed labors only yet accomplished, sorely convinced in 
spirit that that Brucian enterprise was as yet too ar- 
duous for our young shoulders. 

Not more refreshing to the thirsty curiosity of the 
traveler is the tracing of some mighty waters up to their 
shallow fontlet, than it is to a pleased and candid reader 
to go back to the inexperienced essays, the first callow 
flights in authorship, of some established name in litera« 
ture ; from the Gnat which preluded to the vEneid, to 
the Duck which Samuel Johnson trod on. 

In those days every morning paper, as an essential 
retainer to its establishment, kept an author, who was 
bound to furnish daily a quantum of witty paragraphs. 
Sixpence a joke — and it was thought pretty high, too — 
was Dan Stuart's settled remuneration in these cases. The 
chat of the day, scandal, but, above all, dress^ furnished 
the material. The length of no paragraph was to exceed 



NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. m 

seven lines. Shorter they might be, but they must be 
poignant. 

A fasnion of flesh- or rather j^m^-colored hose for 
the ladies, luckily corMing up at the juncture when we 
were on our probation for the place of Chief Jester to 

KS— — 's paper, established our reputation in that line. 
We were pronounced a '' capital hand." Oh the conceits 
which we varied upon red in all its prismatic differences! 
from the trite and obvious flower of Oytherea to the 
flaming costume of the lady that has her sitting upon 
* many waters." Then there was the collateral topic of 
ankles. What an occasion to a truly chaste writer, like 
ourself, of touching that nice brink, and yet never tum- 
bling over it, of a seemingly ever approximating some- 
thing " not quite proper " ; while, like a skillf al posture- 
master, balancing betwjxt decorums and their opposites, 
he keeps the line, from which a hair's-breadth deviation 
is destruction; hovering in the confines of light and 
darkness, or where " both seem either " ; a hazy uncer- 
tain delicacy; Autolycus-like in the play, still putting 
off his expectant auditory with "Whoop, do me no 
harm, good man ! " But, above all, that conceit arrided 
us most at that time, and still tickles our midriff to 
remember, where, allusively to the flight of Astrsea— 
ultima Gcelestdm terras relinquit — we pronounced, in 
reference to the stockings still, that Modesty taking 

HER FINAL LEAVE OF MORTALS, HEE LAST BlUSH WAS VIS- 
IBLE IN HEE ASCENT TO THE HeAVENS BY THE TEACT OF 

THE GLOWING INSTEP. This might be called the crown- 
ing conceit, and was esteemed tolerable writing in those 
days. 

But the fashion of jokes, with all other things, passes 
awa^ ; as did the transient mode which had so favored 



112 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

us. The ankles of our fair friends in a few weeks begaE 
to reassume their whiteness, and left us scarce a leg to 
stand upon. Other female whims followed, but none 
methought so pregnant, so invitatory of shrewd conceits 
and more than single meanings. 

Somebody lias said that to swallow six cross-buns 
daily, consecutively for a fortnight, would surfeit the 
stoutest digestion. But to have to furnish as many jokes 
daily, and that not for a fortnight, but for a long twelve- 
month, as we were constrained to do, was a little harder 
exaction. '' Man goeth forth to his work until the even- 
ing " — from a reasonable hour in the morning, we pre 
sume it was meant. Now, as our main occupation took 
us up from eight till five every day in the City, and as 
our evening hours, at that time of life, had generally to 
do with anything rather than business, it follows that 
the only time we could spare for this manufactory oJ 
Jokes — our supplementary livelihood, that s«applied us ii> 
every want beyond mere bread and cheese — was exact^ 
ly that part of the day which (as we have heard of Nr 
Man's Land) may be fitly denominated No Man's Time ; 
that is, no time in which a man ought to be up and 
awake in. To speak more plainly, it is that time, of an 
hour or an hour and a half's duration, in which a man, 
whose occasions call him up so preposterously, has to 
wait for his breakfast. 

Oh, those headaches at dawn of day, when at five or 
half-past five in summer, and not much later in the dark 
seasons, we were compelled to rise, having been perhaps 
not above four hours in bed (for we were no go-to-beds 
with tfie lamb, though we anticipated the lark ofttiraes 
in her rising ; we like a parting cup at midnight, as all 
young men did before these efEemiaate times, and to 



NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 113 

have our friends about us; we were not constellated 
under Aquarius, that watery sign, and therefore inca- 
pable of Bacchus, cold, washj, bloodless ; we were none 
of your Basilian water-sponges, nor had taken our de- 
grees at Mount Ague ; we were right toping capulets, 
jolly companions, we and they) ; but to have to get up, 
as we said before, curtailed of half our fair sleep, fasting] 
with only a dim vista of refreshing bohea in the dis^ 
tance ; to be necessitated to rouse ourselves at the de- 
testable rap of an old hag of a domestic, who seemed to 
take a diabolical pleasure in her announcement that it 
was "time to rise," and whose chappy knuckles we have 
often yearned to amputate, and string tliem up at our 
chamber door, to be a terror to all such unseasonable 
rest-breakers in future — 

"Facil" and sweet, as Virgil sings, had been the 
"descending" of the over-night balmy, the first sinking 
of the heavy head upon the pillow ; but to get up, as he 
goes on to say — 

.... revocare gradus^ superasque evadere ad auras— 
and to get up, moreover, to make jokes with malice pre- 
pended, there was the "labor," there the '' work." 

No Egyptian taskmaster ever devised a slavery like - 
to that, our slavery. No fractious operants ever turned 
out for half the tyranny which this necessity exercised 
upon us. Half a dozen jests in a day (bating Sundays, 
too)— why, it seems nothmg I We make twice the num- 
ber every day in our lives as a matter of course, and 
claim no Sabbatical exemptions. But then they come 
into our head. But when the liead has to go out to 
them, when the mountain must go to Mahomet - 

Reader, try it foi once, only for one short twelve 
mouth. 

8 



114 



THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELlA. 



It was not every week that a fashion of pink stock- 
ings came up ; but mostlj, instead of it, some rugged, 
untractable subject ; some topic impossible to be con- 
torted into the risible; some feature upon which no 
smile could play ; some flint from which no process of 
ingenuity could procure a scintillation. There they lay ; 
there your appointed tale of brickmaking was set before 
you, which you must finish, with or without straw, as it 
'mppened. The craving Dragon — the Public — like him 
in BeFs temple, must be fed ; it expected its daily ra- 
tions; and Daniel, and ourselves, to do us justice, did 
the best we could on this side bursting him. 

While we were wringing out coy sprightlinesses for 
the " Post," and writhing imder the toil of what is 
called " easy writing," Bob Allen, our quondam school- 
fellow, was tapping his impracticable brains in a like 
service for the " Oracle." Not that Robert troubled 
himself much about wit. If his paragraphs had a spright- 
ly air about them, it was sufficient. He carried this non- 
chalance so far at last, that a matter of intelligence, and 
that no very important one, was not seldom palmed upon 
his employers for a good jest; for example's sake: 
" WalHng yesterday morning casually down Snow Hill^ 
'whom should we meet hut Mr. Deputy Humphreys! We 
rejoice to add, that the worthy Deputy appeared to enjoy 
a good state of health. We do not ever remember to have 
seen him looh better.'''' This gentleman, so surprisingly 
met upon Snow Hill, from some peculiarities in gait or 
gesture, was a constant butt for mirth to the small para- 
graph-mongers of tlie day ; and our friend thought that 
he might have his fling at him with the rest. We met 
A. in Holborn shortly after this extraordinary rencounter, 
rhich he told with tears of satisfaction in his eyes, and 



NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 115 

chuckling at the anticipated effects of its announcement 
next day in the paper. We did not quite comprehend 
where the wit of it lay at the time ; nor was it easy to 
be detected when the thing came out advantaged by type 
and letter-press. He had better have met anything that 
morning than a Common Councilman. His services were 
shortly after dispensed with, on the plea that his para- 
graphs of late had been deficient in point. The one in 
question, it must be owned, had an air, in the opening 
especially, proper to awaken curiosity ; and the senti- 
ment, or moral, wears the aspect of humanity and good- 
neighborly feeling. But somehow the conclusion was 
not judged altogether to answer to the magnificent prom- 
ise of the premises. We traced our friend's pen after- 
ward in the "True Briton," the "Star," the "Traveler," 
from all which he was successively dismissed, the pro- 
prietors having " no further occasion for his services." 
Nothing was easier than to detect him. When wit failed, 
or topics ran low, there constantly appeared the follow- 
ing : " It is not generally known that the three Blue Balls 
at the Pawnbrokers' shops are the ancient arms of Lom- 
lardy. The Lombards were the first money brokers in 
Europe.'''' Bob has done more to set the public right on 
this important point of blazonry than the whole College 
of Heralds. 

The appointment of a regular wit has long ceased to 
be a part of the economy of a morning paper. Editors 
find their own jokes, or do as well without them. Par- 
son Este, and Topham, brought up the set custom of 
" witty paragraphs " first in the " World." Boaden was 
a reigning paragraphist in his day, and succeeded poor 
Allen in the " Oracle." But, as we said, the fashion of 
]okes passes away; and it would be diflficult to discover 



^i6 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

iu the biographer of Mrs. Siddons any traces of that vi- 
vacity and fancy which charmed the whole town at the 
commencement of the present century. Even the pre- 
lusive delicacies of the present writer — the curt " Astrsaan 
allusion " — would be thought pedantic and out of date in 
ihese days. 

From the office of the " Morning Post " (for we may 
as well exhaust our Newspaper Eeminiscences at once), 
by change of property in the paper, we were transferred, 
mortifying exchange! to the office of the "Albion" 
newspajjcr, late Rackstrow's Museum, in Fleet Street. 
What a transition — from a handsome apartment, from 
rosewood desks and silver inkstands, to an office — ^no 
office, but a den rather, but just redeemed from the occu- 
pation of dead monsters, of which it soemed redolent — 
from the center of loyalty and fashion to a focus of vul- 
garity and sedition. Here in murky closet, inadequate 
from its square contents to the receipt of the two bodies 
of editor and humble paragraph maker, together at one 
time, sat in the discharge Oi" his new editorial functions 
.the " Bigod " of Elia) the redoubted John Fenwick. 

Fo, without a guinea in his pocket, and having left 
not many in the pockets of his friends whom he might 
command, had purchased (on tick, doubtless) the whole 
and sole editorship, proprietorship, with all the rights 
and titles (such as they were worth), of the " AlMon"'' 
from one Lovell ; of whom we know nothing, eave that 
he had stood in the pillory for a libel on the Prince of 
Wales. With this hopeless concern, for it had been sink- 
ing ever since its commencement, and could now reckon 
apon not more than a hundred subscribers, F. resolutely 
determined upon pulling down the government J" the 
first instance, and making both our fortunes by w^j 9^ 



NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. li'^ 

eorollary. For seven weeks and more did this infatuated 
democrat go about borrowing seven-shilling pieces, and 
lesser coin, to meet the daily demands from the Stamp 
Office, which allowed no credit to publications of that 
side in politics. An outcast from politer bread, we at- 
tached our small talents to the forlorn fortunes of our 
friend. Our occupation now was to write treason. 

Eecollections of feelings which were all that now re- 
mained from our first boyish heats kindled by the French 
Revolution, when, if we were misled, we erred in the 
company of some who are accounted very good men now 
— rather than any tendency at this time to republican 
doctrines — assisted us in assuming a style of writing, 
while the paper lasted, consonant in no very under tone 
to the right earnest fanaticism of F. Our cue was now 
to insinuate, rather than recommend, possible abdica- 
tions. Blocks, axes, Whitehall tribunals, were covered 
with flowers cf so cunning a periphrasis — as Mr. Bayes 
says, never naming the thing directly — that the keen eye 
of an Attorney-General was insufficient to detect the lurk- 
ing snake among them. There were times, indeed, when 
we sighed for our more gentlemanlike occupation under 
Stuart. But with change of masters it is ever change 
of service. Already one paragraph, and another, as we 
learned afterward from a gentleman at the Treasury, had 
begun to be marked at that office, with a view of its being 
submitted at least to the attention of the proper Law 
Officers — when an unlucky epigram from our pen, aimed 

at Sir J s M h, who was on the eve of departing 

for India to reap the fruits of his apostasy, as F. pro- 
nounced it (it is hardly worth particularizing), happen- 
ing to offend the nice sense of Lord, or, as he then 
delighted to be called, Citiaen Stanhope, deprived F. at 



118 



THE LAST ESSAYS OF EUA. 



once of the last hopes of a guinea from tlie last patron 
that had stuck oj us ; and breaking up our establishment, 
left us to the safe, but somewhat mortifying, neglect of 
the Crown liawyers. It was about this time, or a little 
earlier, that Dan Stuart made that curious confession to 
uo, that he had " never deliberately walked into an Ex= 
hibition at Somerset House in his life." 



BARRENNESS OF THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY 
IN THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 



HoGAETH excepted, can we produce any one painter 
within the last fifty years, or since the humor of exhibit- 
ing began, that has treated a story imaginatively ? By 
this we mean upon whom his subject has so acted, that 
it has seemed to direct Tiim — not to be arranged by him ? 
Any upon whom its leading or collateral points have 
impressed themselves so tyrannically, that he dared not 
treat it otherwise, lest he should falsify a revelation? 
Any that has imparted to his compositions, not merely 
so much truth as is enough to convey a story with clear- 
neess, but that individualizing property which should 
keep the subject so treated distinct in feature from every 
other subject, however similar, and to common apprehen- 
sions almost identical ; so as that we might say, this and 
this part could have found an appropriate place in no 
other picture in the world but tliis? Is there anything 
in modern art — we will not demand that it should be 
equal — but in any way analogous to what Titian has 
effected, in that wonderful bringing together of two times 



I 



ON THE PRODUCTIONS Ol* MODERN ART. 119 



in the " Ariadne," in tlie National Gallery ? Precipitous^ 
with his reeling satyr rout about him, repeopling and re- 
illuming suddenly the waste places, drunk with a new 
fury beyond the grape, Bacchus, born in fire, firelike 
flings himself at the Cretan. This is the time present. 
With this telling of the story, an artist, and no ordinary 
one, might remain richly proud. Guido, in his harmoni- 
ous version of it, saw no further. But from the depths 
of the imaginative spirit Titian has recalled past time, 
and laid it contributory with the present to one simul- 
taneous effect. With the desert all ringing with the mad 
cymbals of his followers, made lucid with the presence 
and new offers of a god, as if unconscious of Bacchus, 
or but idly casting her eyes as upon some unconcerning 
pageant — her soul undistracted from Theseus — Ariadne 
is still pacing the solitary shore in as much heart silence, 
and in almost the same local solitude, with which she 
awoke at daybreak to catch the forlorn last glances of 
the sail that bore away the Athenian. 

Here are two points miraculously co-uniting: fierce 
society with the feeling of solitude still absolute ; noon- 
day revelations, with the accidents of the dull gray dawn 
unquenched and lingering; the present Bacchus, with 
the past Ariadne ; two stories, with double Time ; sepa- 
rate, and harmonizing. Had the artist made the woman 
one shade less indifferent to the god — still more, had she 
expressed a rapture at his advent — where would have 
been the story of the mighty desolation of the heart pre- 
vious? Merged in the insipid accident of a flattering 
offer met with a welcome acceptance. The broken 
heart for Theseus was not lightly to be pieced up by a 
god. 

We have before us a fine rough print, from a picture 



1^0 fHE LAST ESSAYS OP ELlA. 

by Eaphael in tlie Yatican. It is the Presentation of 
the new-born Eve to Adam by the Almighty. A fairer 
mother of mankind we might imagine, and a goodher 
sire, perhaps, of men since born. But these are matters 
subordinate to the conception of the situation displayed 
in this extraordinary production. A tolerably modern 
artist would have been satisfied with tempering certain 
raptures of connubial anticipation with a suitable ac 
knowledgment to the Giver of the blessing, in the coun- 
tenance of the first bridegroom; something like the 
divided attention of the child (Adam was here a child- 
man) between the given toy and the mother who had 
just blest it with the bawble. This is the obvious, 
the first-sight view, the superficial. An artist of a 
higher grade, considering the awful presence they were 
in, would have taken care to subtract something from 
the expression of the more human passion, and to height- 
en the more spiritual one. This would be as much as an 
exhibition-goer, from the opening of Somerset House to 
last year's show, has been encouraged to look for. It is 
obvious to hint at a lower expression yet, in a picture 
that, for respects of drawing and coloring, might be 
deemed not wholly inadmissible within these art -foster- 
ing walls, in which the raptures should be as ninety-nine; 
the gratitude as one, or perhaps zero I By neither the 
one passion nor the other has Kaphael expounded the 
situation of Adam. Singly upon his bi-ow sits the ab- 
sorbing sense of wonder at the created miracle. The 
moment is seized by the intuitive artist, ])erhaps not self- 
conscious of his art, in which ncltlier of the conflicting 
emotions — a moment how abstracted— 'uis had time to 
bpring up, or to battle for inds(!orons mastery. We have 
seen a landscape of a justly admired neoteric, in which 



ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 121 

he aimed at delineating a fiction, one of the most severely 
beautiful in antiquity — the gardens of the Hesperides. 
To do Mr. justice, he had painted a laudable or- 
chard, with fitting seclusion, and a veritable dragon (of 
which a Polypheme, by Poussin, is somehow a facsimile 
for the situation), looking over into the world s!iut out 
backward, so that none but a " still-climbing Hercules '' 
could hope to catch a peep at the admired Ternary 
©f Recluses. No conventual porter could keep his eyes 
better than this custos with the " lidless eyes." He not 
only sees that none do intrude into that privacy, but, as 
clear as daylight, that none but Hercules aut Diabolus 
by any manner of means can. So far all is well. We 
have absolute solitude here or nowhere. Ab extra the 
damsels are snug enough. But here the artist's courage 
seems to have failed him. He began to pity his pretty 
charge, and, to comfort the irksomeness, has peopled 
their solitude with a bevy of fair attendants, maids of 
honor or ladies of the bedchamber, according to the ap- 
proved etiquette at a court of the nineteenth century ; 
giving to the whole scene the air of Q.fete champitre^ if 
we will but excuse the absence of the gentlemen. This 
is well, and Watteauish, But what is become of the 
solitary mystery — the 

Daughters three, 
That sing around the golden tree ? 

This is not the way in which Poussin would have treated 
this subject. 

The paintings — or rather the stupendous architectural 
designs — of a modern artist have been urged as objec- 
tions to the theory of our motto. They are of a charac- 
ter, we confess, to stagger it. His towered structures 



122 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA, 

are of the highest order of the material sublime. Wheth- 
er they were dreams, or transcripts of some elder work- 
manship — Assyrian ruins old — restored by this mighty 
artist, they satisfy our most stretched and craving con- 
ceptions of the glories of the antique world. It is a pity 
that they were ever peopled. On that side, the imagina- 
tion of the artist halts, and appears defective. Let us 
examine the point of the story in the " Belshazzar's 
Feast," We will introduce it by an apposite anecdote. 

The court historians of the day record that at the 
first dinner given by the late King (then Prince Kegent) 
at the Pavilion, the following characteristic frolic was 
played off. The gaests were select and admiring ; the 
banquet profuse and admirable ; the lights lustrous and 
oriental ; the eye was perfectly dazzled with the display 
of plate, among which the great gold salt-cellar, brought 
from the regalia in the Tower for this especial purpose — 
itself a tower I — stood conspicuous for its magnitudCo 
And now the Rev. . . ., the then admired court Chap- 
lain, was proceeding with the grace, when, at a signal 
given, the lights were suddenly overcast, and a huge 
transparency was discovered, in which glittered in gold 
letters— 

" Brighton— Earthquake — Swallow-up- alive I " 

Imagine the confusion of the guests — the Georges and 
garters, jewels, bracelets, molted upon the occasion ! the 
fans dropped, and picked up the next morning by the sly 
court pages! Mrs. Fitz-what's-her-name fainting, and 
the Countess of . . . holding the smelling-bottle, till the 
good-humored Prince caused harmony to be restored by 
calling in fresh candles, and declaring that the whole 
was nothing but a pantomime hoax, got up by the ingeni^ 



ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 123 

ous Mr. Farley, of Oovent Garden, from hints which his 
Eoyal Highness himself had furnished! Then imagine 
the infinite applause that followed, the mutual rallyings, 
the declarations that " they were not much frightened," 
of the assembled galaxy. 

The point of time in the picture exactly answers to 
the appearance of the transparency in the anecdote. 
The huddle, the flutter, the bustle, the escape, the alarms, 
and the mock alarm ; the prettiness heightened by con- 
sternation ; the courtier's fear which was flattery ; and 
the lady's which was affectation ; all that we may con- 
ceive to have taken place in a mob of Brighton courtiers, 
sympathizing with the well-acted surprise of the sover- 
eign — all this and no more, is exhibited by the well- 
dressed lords and ladies in the Hall of Belus. Just this 
sort of consternation we have seen among a flock of dis- 
quieted wild geese at the report only of a gun having 
gone ofi^! 

But is this vulgar fright, this mere animal anxiety for 
the preservation of their persons — such as we have wit- 
nessed at a theatre, when a slight alarm of fire has been 
given — an adequate exponent of a supernatural terror ? 
the way in which the finger of God, writing judgments, 
would have been met by the withered conscience? 
There is a human fear, and a divine fear. The one is 
disturbed, restless, and bent upon escape. The other is 
bowed down, eftbrtless, passive. When the spirit ap- 
peared before. Eliphaz in the visions of the night, and 
the hair of his flesh stood up, was it in the thoughts of 
the Temanite to ring the bell of his chamber, or to call 
up the servants? But let us see in the text what there 
is to justify all this huddle of vulgar consternation. 

From the works of Daniel it aooears Belshazzar had 



124 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

made a great feast to a thousand of bis lords, and drank 
wine before the thousand. The golden and silver ves- 
sels are gorgeously enumerated, with the princes, the 
kihg's concubines, and his wives. Then follows : 

" In the same hour came forth fingers of a man^s 
hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the 
plaster of the wall of the king's palace; and the Mn(; 
saw the part of the hand that wrote. Then the Icing's 
countenance was changed and his thoughts troubled him, 
so that the joints of his loins were loosened, and his 
knees smote one against another." 

This is the plain text. Bj no hint can it be otherwise 
inferred, but that the appearance was solely confined to 
the fancy of Belshazzar, that his single brain was troubled. 
Not a word is spoken of its being seen by any else there 
present, not even by the queen herself, who merely un- 
dertakes for the interpretation of the phenomenon, as 
related to her, doubtless, by her husband. The lords are 
simply said to be astonished; i. e., at the trouble and the 
change of countenance in their sovereign. Even the 
prophet does not appear to have seen the scroll, which 
the king saw. He recalls it only, as Joseph did the 
Dream to the King of Egypt. " Then was the part of 
the hand sent from him [the Lord], and this writing was 
written." He speaks of the phantasm as past. 

Then what becomes of this needless multiplication of 
the miracle ? this message to a royal conscience, singly 
expressed — ^for it was said, "Thy kingdom is divided " — 
simultaneously impressed upon the fancies of a thousand 
courtiers, who were implied in it neither directly nor 
grammatically ? 

But admitting the artist's own version of the story, 
and that the sight was seen also by the thousand cour- 



ON THE PRODUCTIONS OP MODERN ART. 1^^ 

tiers — let it have been visible to all Babylon — as the 
knees of Belshazzar were shaken, and his conntenance 
troubled, even so would the knees of every man in Bab- 
ylon, and their countenances, as of an individual man, 
have been troubled ; bowed, bent down, so would they 
have remained, stupor-fixed, with no thought of strug- 
gling with that inevitable judgment. 

Not all that is optically possible to be seen u to be 
shown in every picture. The eye delightedly dwells upon 
the brilliant individualities in a "Marriage at Oana," by 
Veronese or Titian, to the very texture and color of the 
wedding-garments, the ring glittering upon the bride's 
finger, the metal and fashion of the wine-pots ; for at 
such seasons there is leisure and luxury to be curiouS' 
But in a " day of judgment," or in a " day of lesser hor- 
rors, yet divine," as at the impious feast of Belshazzar 
the eye should see, as the actual eye of an agent orpatieni^ 
in the immediate scene would see, only in masses amd 
indistinction. Not only the female attire and jewelry 
exposed to the critical eye of fashion, as minutely as the 
dresses in a Lady's Magazine, in the criticised picture, 
but perhaps the curiosities of anatomical science, and 
studied diversities of posture, in the falling angels anc' 
sinners of Michael Angelo, have no business in their 
great subjects. There was no leisure for them. 

By a wise falsification, the great masters of pjainting 
got at their true conclusions; by not showing the actual 
appearances, that is, all was to be^ seen at any given mo- 
ment by an indifferent eye, but only what the eye might 
be supposed to see in the doing or sufiering of some por- 
tentous action. Suppose tlie moment of the swallowing 
up of Pompeii. There they were to be seen — houses, 
columns, architectural proportions, diiferences of public 



126 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

and private buildings, men and women at their standing 
occupations, the diversified thousand postures, attitudes, 
dresses — in some confusion truly, but physically they 
were visible. But what eye saw them at that eclipsing 
moment, which reduces confusion to a kind of unity, and 
when the senses are upturned from their proprieties, 
when sight and hearing are a feeling only ? A thousand 
years have passed, and we are at leisure to contemplate 
the weaver fixed standing at his shuttle, the baker at his 
oven, and to turn over with antiquarian coolness the pots 
and pans of Pompeii. 

" Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon, and thou, Moon, 
in the valley of Ajalon." Who, in reading this magnifi- 
cent Hebraism, in his conception, sees aught but tbe 
heroic son of Nun, with the outstretched arm, and the 
greater and lesser light obsequious? Doubtless there 
were to be seen hill and dale, and chariots and horsemen 
on open plain, or winding by secret defiles, and aU the 
circumstances and stratagems of war. But whose eyes 
would have been conscious of this array at the interposi- 
tion of the synchronic miracle ? Yet in the picture of 
this subject by the artist of the " Belshazzar's Feast " — 
no ignoble work either — the marshaling and landscape of 
tlie war is everything, the miracle sinks into an anecdote 
of the day ; and the eye may " dart through rank and 
file traverse" for some minutes, before it shall discover, 
among his armed followers, wMch is Joshua! Not mod- 
ern art alone, but ancient, where only it is to be found 
if anywhere, can be detected erring from defect of this 
imaginative faculty. The world has nothing to show of 
the preternatural in painting, transcending the figure of 
Lazarus bursting his grave-clothes, in the great picture 
at Angerstein's. It seems a thing between two beings. 



ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 127 

A ghastly horror at itself struggles with newly appre- 
hending gratitude at second life bestowed. It can not 
forget that it was a ghost. It has hardly felt that it is a 
body. It has to tell of the world of spirits. Was it from 
a feeling that the crowd of half-impassioned bystanders, 
and the still more irrelevant herd of passers-by at a dis- 
tance, who have not heard or but faintly have been told 
of the passing miracle, admirable as they are in design 
and hue — for it is a glorified work — do not respond ade- 
quately to the action, that the single figure of the La- 
zarus has been attributed to Michael Angelo, and the 
mighty Sebastian unfairly robbed of the fame of the 
greater half of the interest ? Now that there were not 
indifferent passers-by within actual scope of the eyes of 
those present at the miracle, to whom the sound of it 
had but faintly, or not at all, reached, it would be hardi- 
hood to assert; but would they see them? or can the 
mind in the conception of it admit of such unconcerning 
objects — can it think of them at all? or what associating 
league to the imagination can there be between the seers 
and the seers not of a presential miracle ? 

Were an artist to paint upon demand a picture of a 
Dryad, we will ask whether, in the present low state of 
expectation, the patron would not or ought not to be 
fully satisfied with a beautiful naked figure recumbent 
under wide-stretched oaks? Disseat those woods, and 
place the same figure among fountains and fall of pellucid 
water, and you have a — ISTaiad ! Not so in a rough print 
we have seen after Julio Eomano, we think — for it is 
long since. There^ by no process, with mere change of 
scene, could the figure have reciprocated characters. 
Long, grotesque, fantastic, yet with a grace of her own, 
beautiful in convolution and distortion, linked to her 



128 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

connatural tree, cotwisting with its limbs her own, tilJ 
both seemed either — these, animated brunches ; those, 
disaniraated members — yet the animal and vegetable lives 
suflfioientlj kept distinct — his Dryad lay — an approxima- 
tion of two natures, wiiich to conceive it must be seen ; 
analogous to, not the same with, the delicacies of Ovidian 
transform ations. 

To the lowest subjects, and, to a superficial compre- 
hension, the most barren, the Great Masters gave lofti- 
ness and fruitfulness. The large eye of genius saw in the 
meanness of present objects their capabiHties of treatment 
from their relations to some grand Past or Future. How 
has Rapliael — we must still linger about the Vatican — 
treated the humble craft of the ship-builder, in Ms " Build- 
ing of the Ark " ? It is in that scriptural series to which we 
have referred, and which, judging from some fine rough 
old graphic sketches of them which we possess, seem to 
be of a higher and more poetic grade than even the Car- 
toons. The dim of sight are the timid and the shrinking. 
There is a cowardice in modern art. As the FrencJiman, 
of whom Coleridge's friend made the prophetic guess at 
Rome, from the beard and horns of the Moses of Michael 
Angelo, collected no inferences beyond that of a He Goat 
and a Cornuto ; so from tliis subject, of mere mechanic 
promise, it would instinctively turn away, as from one 
incapable of investitude with any grandeur. The dock- 
yards at Woolwich would object derogatory associations. 
The depot at Chatham would be the mote and the beam 
in its intellectual eye. But not to the nautical prepara- 
tions in the ship -yards of Civita Yecchia did Raphael 
look for instructions, when he imagined the Building of 
the Vessel that was to be conservatory of the wrecks of 
the species pf drqwned manVdnd. li\ the iiiteijsity of the 



ON THE I»RODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 129 

action, he keeps ever out of sight the meanness of the 
operation. There is the Patriarch, in calm forethought, 
and -with holy prescience, giving directions. And there 
are his agents — the solitary but sufficient Three — hew- 
ing, sawing, every one with the might and earnestness of 
a Demiurgus ; under some instinctive rather than techni- 
cal guidance ! giant-muscled ; every one a Hercules, or 
liker to those Yulcanian Three, that in sounding caverns 
under Mongibello wrought in fire — Brontes, and black 
Steropes, and Pyracmon. So work the workmen thai 
should repair a world ! 

Artists again err in the confounding of poetic with 
pictorial subjects. In the latter, the exterior accidents 
are nearly everything, the unseen qualities as nothing. 
Othello's color — the infirmities and corpulence of a Sir 
John Falstaff — do they haunt us perpetually in the read- 
ing? or are they obtruded upon our conceptions one 
time for ninety-nine that we are lost in admiration at the 
respective moral or intellectual attributes of the charac- 
ter? But in a picture Othello is always a Blackamoor, 
and the other only Plump Jack. Deeply corporealiz\3d, 
and enchained hopelessly in the groveling fetters of ex- 
ternality, must be the mind to which, in its better mo- 
ments, the image of the high-souled, high-intelligenced 
Quixote — the errant Star of Knighthood, made more 
tender by eclipse — has never presented itself, divested 
from the unhallowed accompaniment of a Sancho, or a 
rabblement at the heels of Rosinante. That man has 
read his book by halves ; he has laughed, mistaking his 
author's purport, which was — tears. The artist that 
pictures Quixote (and it is in this degrading point that he 
5s every season held up at our Exhibitions) in the shal- 
low hope of exciting mirth would have joined the rabble 
9 



130 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

at the heels of his starved steed. We wish not to seo 
that counterfeited which we would not have wished to 
see in the reality. Conscious of the heroic inside of the 
noble Quixote, who on liearing that his withered person 
was passing, would have stepped over his tlireshold to 
gaze upon his forlorn habiliments, and the " strange bed- 
fellows which misery brings a man acquainted with ? " 
Shade of Cervantes ! who in thy Second Part could put 
into the mouth of thy Quixote those high aspirations of 
a super-chivalrous gallantry, where he replies to one of 
the shepherdesses, apprehensive that he would spoil their 
pretty networks, and inviting him to be a guest with 
them in accents like these : " Truly, fairest Lady, Actseon 
was not more astonished when he saw Diana bathing her- 
self at the fountain, than I have been in beholding your 
beauty. I commend the manner of your pastime, and 
thank you for your kind offers ; and, if I may serve you, 
so I may be sure you will be obeyed, you may command 
me: for my profession is this. To show myself thankful 
and a doer of good to all sorts of people, especially of the 
rank that your person shows you to be ; and if those 
nets, as they take up but a little piece of ground, should 
take up the whole world, I should seek out new worlds 
to pass through, rather than break them : and (he adds) 
that you may give credit to this my exaggeration, be- 
hold at least he that promiseth you this is Don Quixote 
de la Mancha, if haply this name hath come to your 
hearing." Illustrious Romancer ! were the " fine fren- 
zies" which possessed the brain of thy own Quixote a fit 
subject, as in this Second Part, to be exposed to the 
jeers of Duennas and Serving Men ? to be monstered, and 
shown up at the heartless banquets of great men? Was 
that pitiable infirmity, which in thy First Part misleads 



ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART, 131 

Mm, always from within^ into lialf-ludicrous, but more than 
half-compassionable and admirable errors, not infliction 
enough from heaven, that men by studied artifices must 
devise and practice upon the humor, to inflame where 
they should soothe it ! Why, Goneril would have blushed 
to practice upon the abdicated king at this rate, and the 
she wolf Regan not have endured to play the pranks 
upon his fled wits, which thou hast made thy Quixote 
sulfer in Duchesses' halls, and at the hand of that un- 
worthy nobleman.* 

In the first adventures, even, it needed all the art of 
the most consummate artist in the book way that the 
world hath yet seen, to keep up in the mind of the read- 
er the heroic attributes of the character without relaxing, 
so as absolutely that they shall suffer no alloy from the 
debasing fellowship of the clown. If it ever obtrudes 
itself as a disharmony, are we inclined to laugh ; or not, 
rather, to indulge a contrary emotion ? Cervantes, stung, 
perchance, by the relish with which his reading public 
had received the fooleries of the man, more to their pal- 
ates tlian the generosities of the master, in the sequel let 
his pen run riot, lost the harmony and the balance, and 
sacrificed a great idea to the taste of his contemporaries. 
"We know that in the present day the Knight has fewer 
admirers than the Squire. Anticipating what did actually 
happen to him — as afterward it did to his scarce inferior 
follower, the author of "Guzman de Alfarache" — that 
some less knowing hand would prevent him by a spurious 
Second Part; and judging that it would be easier for his 
competitor to outbid him in the comicalities than in the 
romance of his work, he abandoned his Knight, and has 

* Yet from this Second Part our cried-up pictures are mostly 
selected — the waiting-women with beurde, etc. 



132 THE LAST ESSAYS OP ELIA. 

fairly set up the Squire for his Hero. For what else has 
he unsealed the eyes of Sancho? and instead of that twi- 
light state of semi-insanity — the madness at second hand 
— the contagion caught from a stronger mind infected — 
that war between native cunning and hereditary defer- 
ence, with which he has hitherto accoihpanied his master 
— two for a pair almost — does he substitute a downright 
Knave, with open eyes, for his own ends only following 
a confessed Madman ; and offering at one time to lay, if 
not actually laying, hands upon him ! From the moment 
that Sancho loses his reverence, Don Quixote is become 
a treatable lunatic. Our artists handle him accordingly. 



THE WEDDING. 



I DO not know when I have been better pleased than 
at being invited last week to be present at the wedding 
of a friend's daughter. I like to make one at these cere- 
monies, which to us old people give back our youth in a 
manner, and restore our gayest season, in the remem- 
brance of our own success, or the regrets, scarcely less 
tender, of our own youthful disappointments, in this 
point of a settlement. On these occasions I am sure to 
be in good humor for a week or two after, and enjoy a 
reflected honeymoon. Being without a family, I am flat- 
tered with these temporary adoptions into a friend's 
family ; I feel a sort of cousinhood, or uncleship, for the 
season ; I am inducted into degrees of aflanity ; and, in 
the participated socialities of the little community, I lay 
down for a brief while my solitary bachelorship. I car- 



I 



THE WEDDING. 133 

ry this humor so far, that I take it unkindly to he left 
out, even when a funeral is going on in the house of a 
dear friend. But to my subject. 

The union itself had been long settled, but its celebra- 
tion had been hitlierto deferred, to an almost unreason- 
able state of i^uspense in the lovers, by some invincible 
prejudices which the bride's father had unhappily con- 
tracted upon the subject of the too early marriages of 
females. He has been lecturing anytime these live years 
— for to that length the courtship has been protracted — 
upon the propriety of putting off the solemnity till the 
lady should have completed her five-and-twentieth year. 
We all began to be afraid that a suit, which as yet had 
abated of none of its ardors, might at last be lingered on 
till passion had time to cool, and love go out in the ex- 
periment. But a little wheedling on the part of his wife, 
w^ho was by no means a party to these overstrained no- 
tions, joined to some serious expostulations on that of 
his friends, who, from the growing infirmities of the old 
gentleman, could not promise ourselves many years' en- 
joyment of his company, and were anxious to bring mat- 
ters to a conclusion during his lifetime, at length pre- 
vailed ; and on Monday last the daughter of my old friend, 
Admiral , having attained the womanly age of nine- 
teen, was conducted to the church by her pleasant cousin 
J , who told some few years older. 

Before the youthful part of my female readers ex- 
press their indignation at the abominable loss of time 
occasioned to the lovers by the preposterous notions of 
my ohl friend, they will do well to consider the reluc- 
tance which a fond parent naturally feels at partmg with 
his child. To this unwillingness, I believe, in most cases 
may be traced the difference of opinion on this point be- 



134 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

tween child and parent, whatever pretences of interest or 
prudence may be held ont to cover it. The hardhearted- 
ness of fathers is a fine theme for romance writers, a sure 
and moving topic ; but is there not something untender, 
to say no more of it, in the hurry which a beloved child 
is sometimes in to tear herself from the paternal stock, 
and commit herself to strange graftings? The case is 
heightened where the lady, as in the present instance, 
happens to be an only child. I do not understand these 
matters experimentally, but I can make a shrewd guess at 
the wounded pride of a parent upon these occasions. It 
is no new observation, I believe, that a lover in most cases 
has no rival so much to be feared as the lather. Cer- 
tainly there is a jealousy in unparallel subjects^ which is 
little less heart-rending than the passion which we more 
strictly christen by that name. Mothers' scruples are 
more easily got over ; for this reason, I suppose, that the 
protection transferred to a husband is less a derogation 
and a loss to their authority than to the paternal. Moth- 
ers, besides, have a trembling foresight, which paints the 
inconveniences (impossible to be conceived in the same 
degree by the other parent) of a life of forlorn celibacy 
which a refusal of a tolerable match may entail upon 
their child. Mothers' instinct is a surer guide here than 
the cold reasonings of a father on such a topic. To this 
instinct maybe imputed, and by it alone maybe excused, 
the unbeseeming artifices by which some wives push on 
the matrimonial projects of their daughters, which the 
husband, however approving, shall entertain with com- 
parative indifference. A little shamelessness on this 
head is pardonable. With this explanation, forwardness 
becomes a grace, and maternal importunity receives the 
name of a virtue. But the parson stays, while I prepos- 



THE WEDDING. 135 

terously assume his oflSce ; I am preaching, while th« 
bride is on the threshold. 

Nor let anj of my female readers suppose that the 
sage reflections which have just escaped me have the 
obliquest tendency of application to the young lady, who, 
it will be seen, is about to venture upon a change in her 
condition at a mature and competent age, and not without 
the fullest approbation of all parties. I only deprecate 
'Very hasty marriages. 

It had been fixed that the ceremony should be gone 
through at an early hour, to give time for a little dejeuner 
afterward, to which a select party of friends had been 
invited. We were in church a little before the clock 
struck eight. 

Nothing could be more judicious or graceful than the 
dress of the bridemaids — the three charming Miss For- 
esters — on this morning. To give the bride an oppor- 
tunity of shining singly, they had come habited all in 
green. I am ill at describing female apparel ; but while 
she stood at the altar in vestments white and candid as 
her thoughts, a sacrificial whiteness, they assisted in 
robes such as might become Diana's nymphs — Foresters 
indeed — as such who had not yet come to the resolution 
of putting off .cold virginity. These young maids, not 
being so blest as to have a mother living, I am told, keep 
single for tlieir father's sake, and live all together so 
happy with their remaining parent, that the hearts of 
their lovers are ever broken with the prospect (so inau- 
spicious to their hopes) of such uninterrupted and pro- 
voking home-comfort. Gallant girls ! each a victim wor- 
thy of Iphigenia ! 

I do not know what business I have to be present in 
solemn places. I can not divest me of an unseasonable 



Ige THE LAST ESSAtS OF tUA. 

disposition to levity upon the most awful occasions. 1 
was never cut out for a public functionary. Ceremony 
and I have long shaken hands ; but I could not resist 
the importunities of the young lady's father, whose gout 
unhappily confined him at home, to act as parent on this 
occasion, and give away the hride. Something ludicrous 
occurred to me at this most serious of all moments — a 
sense of my unfitness to have the disposal, even in im- 
agination, of the sweet young creature beside me. I fear 
I was betrayed to some lightness, for the awful eye of 
the parson — and the rector's eye of St. Mildred's in the 
Poultry is no trifle of a rebuke — was upon me in an in- 
stant, souring my incipient jest to the tristful severities 
of a funeral. 

This was the only misbehavior which I can plead to 
upon this solemn occasion, unless what was objected to 
me after the ceremony, by one of the handsome Miss 

T s, be accounted a solecism. She was pleased to 

say that she had never seen a gentleman uefore me give 
away a bride in black. Now black has been my ordinary 
apparel so long — indeed, I take it to be the proper cos- 
*«*^tume of an author — the stage sanctions it — that to have 
appeared in some lighter color (a pe^ -green coat, for 
instance, like the bridegroom's) would have raised more 
mirth at my expense than the anomaly h.Hd created cen- 
sure. But I could perceive that the bride's mother and 
some elderly ladies present (God bless them!) would 
have been well content, if I had come in any other color 
than that. But I got over the omen by a lucky apologue, 
which I remembered out of Pilpay, or some Indian au- 
thor, of all the birds being invited to the linnet's wed- 
ding, at which, when all the rest came in their g^vest 
feathers, the raven alone apologized for his doak h^ 



THE WEDDING. £37 

cause " he had no other." This tolerably reconciled the 
elders. But with the young people all was merriment, 
and shaking of hands, and congratulations, and kissing 
away the bride's tears, and kissing from her in return, 
till a young lady, who assumed some experience in these 
matters, having worn the nuptial bands some four or five 
weeks longer than her friend, rescued her, archly observ- 
ing, with half an eye upon the bridegroom, that at this 
rate she would have " none left." 

My friend the Admiral was in fine wig and buckle on 
this occasion — a striking contrast to his usual neglect of 
personal appearance. He did not once shove np his 
borrowed locks (his custom ever at his morning studies) 
to betray the few gray stragglers of his own beneath 
them. He wore an aspect of thoughtful satisfaction. 
I trembled for the hour, which at length approached, 
when after a protracted 'brealcfast of three hours — if 
stores of cold fowls, tongues, hams, botargoes, dried 
fruits, wines, cordials, etc., can deserve so meager an 
appellation — the coach was announced, which was come 
to carry off the bride and bridegroom for a season, as 
custom has sensibly ordained, into the country; upon 
which design, wishing them a felicitous journey, let us 
return to the assembled guests. 

As when a well-graced actor leaves the stage, 

The eyes of men 

Are idly bent on him that enters next — 

so idly did we bend our eyes upon one another when the 
chief performers in the morning's pageant had vanished. 
Kone told his tale. None sipped her glass. The poor 
Admiral made an effort — it was not much. I had anti- 
ipated so far. ijven the infinity of full satisfaction, th^t 



i 



138 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

had betrj /ed itself through the prim looks and quiet de- 
portment of his lady, began to wane into something of 
misgiving, No one knew whether to take their leaves 
or stay. We seemed assembled upon a silly occasion. 
In this crisis, betwixt tarrying and departure, I must do 
justice to a foolish talent of mine, which had otherwise 
!ike to have brought me into disgrace in the forepart of 
the day ; I mean a power, in any emergency, of thinking 
and giving vent to all manner of strange nonsense. In 
this awkward dUemma I found it sovereign. I rattled 
off some of my most excellent absurdities. All were 
willing to be relieved, at any expense of reason, from 
the pressure of the intolerable vacuum which had suc- 
ceeded to the morning bustle. By this means I was for- 
tunate in keeping together the better part of the com- 
pany to a late hour ; and a rubber of whist (the Admir- 
al's favorite game), with some rare strokes of chance as 
well as skill, which came opportunely on his side — length- 
ened out till midnight — dismissed the old gentleman at 
last to his bed with comparatively easy spirits. 

I have been at my old friend's various times since. 
I do not know a visiting place where every guest is so 
perfectly at ease ; nowhere, where harmony is so strange- 
ly the result of confusion. Everybody is at cross pur^ 
poses, yet the effect is so much better than uniformity. 
Contradictory orders ; servants pulling one way, master 
and mistress driving some other, yet both diverse ; visi- 
tors huddled up in corners ; chairs unsymmetrized ; can- 
dles disposed by chance ; meals at odd hours, tea and 
supper at once, or the latter preceding the former; the 
host and the guest conferring, yet each upon a different 
topic, each understanding himself, neither trying to un- 
derstand or hear the other ; draughts and politics, chess 



NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE. 139 

and political economy, cards and conversation on nauti- 
cal matters, going on at once, without the hope, or indeed 
the wish, of distinguishing them, make it altogether the 
most perfect concordia discors you shall meet with. Yet 
somehow the old house is not quite what it should be. 
The Admiral still enjoys his pipe, but he has no Miss 
Emily to fill it for him. The instrument stands where it 
stood, but she is gone whose delicate touch could some- 
times for a short minute appease the warring elements. 
He has learnt, as Marvel expresses it, to "make his des- 
tiny his choice." He bears bravely up, but he does not 
come out with his flashes of wild wit so thick as form- 
erly. His sea-songs seldomer escape him. His wife, too, 
looks as if she wanted some younger body to scold and 
set to rights. We all miss a junior presence. It is won- 
derful how one young maiden freshens up, and Iceeps 
green, the paternal roof. Old and young seem to have 
an interest in her, so long as she is not absolutely dis- 
posed of. The youthfulness of the bouse is flown. Em- 
ily is married. 



REJOICINGS UPON THE NEW YEAR'S COMING 
OF AGE.* 

The Old Year being dead, and the N'ew Yea?' coming 
of age, which he does, by Calendar Law, as soon as the 
breath is out of the old gentleman's body, nothing would 
serve the young spark but he must give a dinner upon 
the occasion, to which all the Bays in the year were in- 
vited. The Festivals, whom he deputed as his stewards, 

* This signed Ella's Ghost. 



140 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

were mightily taken with the notion. They had been 
engaged time out of mind, they said, in providing mirth 
and good cheer for mortals below ; and it was time they 
should have a taste of their own bounty. It was stiflQy 
debated among them whether the Fasts should be ad- 
mitted. Some said the appearance of such lean, starved 
guests, with their mortified faces, would pervert the ends 
of the meeting. But the objection was overruled by 
Christmas Day^ who had a design upon Ash Wednesday 
(as you shall hear), and a naughty desire to see how the 
old Dominie would behave himself in his cups. Only the 
Vigils were requested to come with their lanterns, to 
light the gentlefolks home at night. 

All the Bays came to their day. Covers were pro- 
vided for three hundred and sixty-five guests at the prin- 
cipal table ; with an occasional knife and fork at the 
sideboard for the Tioenty- Ninth of February, 

I should have told you that cards of invitation had 
been issued. The carriers were the Hours ; twelve little 
merry, whirligig foot-pages as you should desire to see, 
that went all round, and found out the persons invited 
well enough, with the exception of Easter Day^ Shrove 
Tuesday^ and a few such Movables^ who had lately shifted 
their quarters. 

Well, they all met at last, foul Days, fine Days, all 
sorts of Days^ and a rare din they made of it. Ther© 
was nothing but, Hail ! fellow Day — well met, brother 
Day — sister Day. Only Lady Day kept a little on the 
aloof, and seemed somewhat scornful. Yet some said 
Twelfth Day cut her out and out, for she came in a tif- 
fany suit, white and gold, like a queen on a frost- cake, 
all royal, glittering, and Epiphanous. The rest came, 
gpRi© in green, some iji wWte ; but old X^mt and hu 



NfiW YEAR'S COMING OF AGfe. 141 

family were not yet out of mourning. Eainy Days came 
in, dripping; and sunshiny Days helped them to change 
their stockings. Wedding Day was there in his marriage 
finery, a little the worse for wear. Pay Day came late, 
as he always does; and Doomsday sent word — he might 
be expepted. 

April Fool (as my young lord's jester) took upon 
himself to marshal the guests, and wild work he made 
with it. It would have posed old Erra Pater to have 
found out any given Day in the year, to erect a scheme 
upon — good Days^ bad Days were so shuffled together, 
to the confounding of all sober horoscopy. 

He had stuck the Twenty-First of June next to the 
Twenty -Second of December^ and the former looked like 
a Maypole siding a marrow-bone. Asli Wednesday got 
wedged in (as was concerted) betwixt Christmas and 
Lord Mayor'' s Days. Lord! how he laid about him! 
Nothing but barons of beef and turkeys would go down 
with him — to the great greasing and detriment of his 
new sackcloth bib and tucker. And still Christmas Day 
was at his elbow, plying him with the wassail-bowl, till 
he roared, and hiccup'd, and protested there was no faith 
in dried ling, but commended it to the devil for a sour, 
windy, acrimonious, censorious, hy-po-crit-crit-critical 
mess, and no dish for a gentleman. Then he dipt his 
fist into the middle of the great custard that stood before 
his left-hand neighbor, and daubed his hungry beard all 
over with it, till you would have taken him for the Last 
J)ay in December^ it so hung in icicles- 

At another part of the table. Shrove Tuesday was 
helping the Second of September to some cock broth — 
which courtesy the latter returned with the delicate thigh 
of a hen pheasant ; so there was no love lost for that 



142 *rHE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

matter. The Last of Lent was sponging upon Shrove 
tide's pancakes ; which April Fool perceiving, told him 
he did well, for pancakes were proper to a good fry- 
day. 

In another part, a hubbub arose about the Thirtieth 
of January^ who, it seems, being a sour puritanic char- 
acter, that thought nobody's meat good or sanctified 
enough for him, had smuggled into the room a calf's 
head, which he had cooked at home for that purpose, 
thinking to feast thereon incontinently ; but as it lay in 
the dish March Many -weathers^ who is a very fine lady, 
and subject to the meagrims, screamed out there was a 
"human head in the platter," and raved about Herodias's 
daughter to that degree, that the obnoxious viand was 
obliged to be removed; nor did she recover her stomach 
till she had gulped down a Restorati'De^ confected of OaTc 
Apple^ which the merry Twenty-Ninth of May always 
carries about with him for that purpose. 

The King's health being called for after this, a not- 
able dispute arose between the Twelfth of August (a 
zealous old Whig gentlewoman), and the Twenty-Third 
of April (a new fangled lady of the Tory stamp), as to 
which of them should have the honor to propose it. Au 
gust grew hot upon the matter, affirming time out oi 
mind the prescriptive right to have lain with her, till hei 
rival had basely supplanted her ; whom she represented 
as little better than a Tcept mistress, who went about in 
■fine clothes^ while she (the legitimate Biethday) had 
scarcely a rag, etc. 

April Fool^ being made mediator, confirmed the right 
in the strongest form of words to the appellant, but de- 
cided for peace' sake that the exercise of it should re- 
main with the present possessor. At the same time, he 



NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE. 143 

slyly rounded the first lady in the ear, that an action 
might lie against the Crown for U-geny. 

It beginning to grow a little duskish, Candlemas lus- 
tily bawled out for lights, which was opposed by all the 
Days, who protested against burning daylight. Then 
fair water was handed round iii silver ewers, and the 
3ame lady wi*s observed to take an unusual time in 
Washing her?,<3lf. 

May Daj, with that sweetness which is peculiar to 
her, in a ne.it speech proposing the health of the founder, 
crowned hv.r goblet (and by her example the rest of the 
company) with garlands. This being done, the lordly 
New Yea? from the upper end of the table, in a cordial 
but some\/hat lofty tone, returned thanks. He felt proud 
on an occasion of meeting so many of his worthy father's 
late tenaiits, promised to improve their farms, and at the 
same time to abate (if anything was found unreasonable) 
in their rents. 

At the mention of this, the four Quarter Days invol- 
tarily looked at each other, and smiled; April Fool 
whistled to an old tune of " New Brooms " ; and a surly 
old rebel at the further end of the table (who was dis- 
covered to be no other than the Fifth of November) mut- 
tered out, distinctly enough to be heard by the whole 
company, words to this effect, that "when the old one i? 
gone, he is a fool that looks for a better." Which rude- 
ness of his, the guests resenting, unanimously voted his 
expulsion ; and the malcontent was thrust out neck and 
heels into the cellar, as the properest place for such a 
houtefeu and firebrand as he had shown himself to be. 

Order being restored, the young lord (who, to say the 
truth, had been a little ruffled, and put aside his oratory) 
in as f§w, and yet as obliging words as possible, assured 



144 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

them of entire welcome ; and, witli a graceful turn sing- 
ing out poor Twenty-Ninth of February that sat all this 
while mumchance at the sideboard, begged to couple his 
health with that of the good company before him — which 
he drank accordingly ; observing that he had not seen 
his honest face any time these four years — with a num- 
ber of endearing expressions besides. At the same time, 
removing the solitary Bay from the forlorn seat which 
had been assigned him, he stationed him at his own 
board, somewhere between the Oreek Calends and Latter 
Lammas. 

Ash Wednesday^ being now called upon for a song, with 
his eyes stuck fast in his head, and as well as the Canary 
he had swallowed would give him leave, struck up a 
carol, which Christmas Day had taught him for th^ 
nonce; and was followed by the latter, who gave "Mis- 
erere " in fine style, hitting off the mumping tones and 
lengthened drawl of Old Mortification with infinite hu- 
mor. April Fool swore they had exchanged conditions; 
but Good Friduy was observed to look extremely grave ; 
and Sunday held her fan before her face, that she might 
not be seen to smile. 

Shrovetide, Lord Mayor's Day, and April Fooly next 
joined in a glee — 

Which is the properest day to drink ? 

in which all the Days, chiming in, made a merry burden. 
They next fell tcf quibbles and conundrums. The 
question being proposed, who had the greatest number 
of followers, the Quarter Days said there could be no 
question as to that; for they had all the creditors in the 
world dogging their heels. But April Fool gave it in fa- 
vor of the Forty Days he/ore Easter; because the 



NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE. I45 

debtors in all cases outnumbered the creditors, and they 
kept lent all the year. 

All this while Valentine^s Day kept courting pretty 
May^ who sat next him, slipping amorous hilUtSrdoux 
under the table, till the Dog Days (who are <iQ,turally of 
a warm constitution) began to be Jealous, and to bark 
and rage exceedingly. April Fool^ who likes a bit of 
sport above measure, and had some r'*etensions to the 
lady besides, as being but a cousin on'e removed, clapped 
and halloo'd them on ; and as fast as their indignation 
cooled, those mad wags, the Emb^ Days^ were at it with 
their bellows to blow it into a fl/>'ine ; and all was in a fer- 
ment, till old Madam Septuag^ lima (who boasts herself 
the Mother of the Days) wise^ diverted the conversation 
with a tedious tale of the \c /ers which she could reckon 
when she was young ; an') of one Master Rogation Day 
in particular, who, was *br ever putting the question to 
her; but she kept h/in at a distance, as the chronicle 
would tell — by wYvM I apprehended she meant the Al- 
manac. Then sho rambled on to tlie Days that icere gone^ 
the good old Diys^ and so to the Days before the Flood— 
which plaiuly showed her old head to be little better 
*han crazod and doited. 

Day being ended, the days called for their cloaks and 
fi-ep.t coats, and took their leaves. Lord Mayor'^s Day 
^QVit off in a Mist, as usual ; Shortest Day in a deep black 
Fog, that wrapt the little gentleman all round like a 
hedgehog. Two Vigils — so watchmen are called in 
heaven — saw Christmas Day safe home ; they had been 
used to the business before. Another Vigil— 3. stout, 
sturdy patrol, called the Ece of St. Christopher — seeing 
Ash Wednesday in a condition little better than he should 
be, e'en whipt him over his shoulders, pick-a-back fash- 
10 



143 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

ion, and Old Mortification went floating home singing 

On the bat's back do I fly 

and a number of old snatches besides, between drunlr 
and sober; but very few Aves or Penitentiaries (you 
may believe me) were among them. Longest Day set ofi 
westward in beautiful crimson and gold — the rest, some 
in one fashion, some in another ; but Valentine and 
pretty May took their departure together in one of tlie 
prettiest silvery twiliglits a Lover's Day could wish to 
set iu. 



OLD CHINA. 



I HAVE an almost feminine partiality for old china. 
When I go to see any great house, I inquire for the china- 
closet, and next for the picture-gallery. I can not de- 
fend the order of preference, but by saying that we have 
all some taste or other of too ancient a date to admit of 
our remembering distinctly that it was an acquired one„ 
I can call to mind the first play and the first exhibition 
that I was taken to ; but I am not conscious of a time 
when china Jars and saucers were introduced into my 
imagination. 

1 had no repugnance then — why should I now have \ 
=— to those little, lawless, azure-tinctured grotesques, that, 
under the notion of men and women, float about, uncir- 
cumscribed by any element, in that world before perspec- 
tive — a china teacup. 

I like to see my old friends — whom distance can 
not diminish —figuring up in the air (so they appear tc 



5ld china. l4t 

our optics), yet on terra firma still ; for so we must in 
courtesy interpret that speck of deeper blue which the 
decorous artist, to prevent absurdity, had made to spring 
up beneath their sandals. 

I love the men with women's faces, and the women, 
if possible, with still more womanish expressions. 

Here is a young and courtly Mandarin, handing tea to 
a lady from a salver — two miles off. See how distance 
seems to set off respect ! And here the same lady, or an- 
other — for likeness is identity on teacups — is stepping 
into a little fairy boat, moored on the hither side of this 
calm garden river, with a dainty mincing foot, which in 
a right angle of incidence (as angles go in our world) 
must infallibly land her in the midst of a flowery mead^ 
a furlong off, on the other side of the same strange 
stream ! 

Farther on — if far or near can be predicated of their 
world — see horses, trees, pagodas, dancing the hays. 

Here, a cow and rabbit couchant, and co-extensive — 
so objects show, seen through the lucid atmosphere of 
fine Cathay. 

I was pointing out to my cousin last evening, over our 
Hyson (which we are old-fashioned enough to drink un= 
mixed still of an afternoon), some of these speciosa mir- 
ucula upon a set of extraordinary old blue china (a recent 
purchase) which we were now^ for the first time using ; 
and could not help remarking how favorable circum- 
stances had been to us of late years, that we could afford 
to please the eye sometimes with trifles of this sort — 
when a passing sentiment seemed to overshade the brows 
of my companion. I am quick at detecting these sum- 
mer clouds in Bridget. 

" I wish the good old times would come again,'' she 



148 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

said, '*wlien we were not quite so rich. I do not mean 
that I want to be poor; but there was a middle state '' 
• — so she was pleased to ramble on — " in which 1 am 
sure we were a great deal happier. A purchase is but 
a purchase, now that you have money enough and to 
spare. Formerly it used to be a triumph. When we 
ooveted a cheap luxury (and oh! how much ado 1 had 
to get you to consent in those times ! ), we were used to 
have a debate two or three days before, and to weigh 
the for and against^ and think what we might spare it 
out of, and what saving we could hit upon, that should 
be an equivalent. A thing was worth buying then, 
when we felt the money that we paid for it. 

" Do you remember the brown suit which you made 
to hang upon you till all your friends cried shame upon 
you, it grew so threadbare — and all because of that folio 
Beaumont and Fletcher which you dragged home late at 
night from Barker's in Oovent Garden? Do you remem- 
ber how we eyed it for weeks before we could make up 
our minds to the purchase, and had not come to deter- 
mination till it was near ten o'clock of the Saturday 
night, when you set off from Is ington, fearing you should 
be too late — and when the old bookseller with some 
grumbling opened his shop, and by the twinkling taper 
(for he was setting bedward) lighted out the relic from 
his dusty treasures — and when you lugged it home, wish- 
ing it were twice as cumbersome — and when you pre- 
sented it to me — and when we were exploring the per- 
fectness of it {collating you called it) — and while I was 
repairing some of the loose leaves with paste, which your 
impatience would not suffer to be left till daybreak- 
was there no pleasure in being a poor man ? Or can 
those neat black clothes which you wear now, and are so 



OLD CHINA. X49 

careful to keep brushed, since we have become rich and 
finical, give you half the honest vanity with which you 
flaunted it about in that overworn suit — your old corbeau 
—for four or five weeks longer than you should have 
done to pacify your conscience for the mighty sum of 
fifteen—or sixteen shillings was it ?— a great affair we 
thought it then — which you had lavished on the old 
folio ? Now you can afford to buy any book that pleases 
you, but I do not see that you ever bring me home any 
nice old purchase now. 

" When you came home with twenty apologies for 
laying out a less number of shillings upon that print after 
Leonardo, which we christened the 'Lady Blanch ; ' when 
you looked at the purchase, and thought of the money 
— and thought of the money, and looked again at the 
picture — was there no pleasure in being a poor man? 
Now, you have nothing to do but to walk into Ool- 

naghi's, as W calls it, and buy a wilderness of 

Leonardos. Yet do you ? 

" Then, do you remember our pleasant walks to En- 
field, and Potter's Bar, and Waltham, when we had a 
holiday — holidays, and all other fun, are gone now we 
are rich — and the little hand-basket in which I used to 
deposit our day's fare of savory cold lamb and salad— and 
how you would pry about at noon-tide for some decent 
house, where we might go in and produce our store, only 
paying for the ale that you must call for, and speculate 
upon the looks of the landlady, and whether she was 
likely to allow us a table-cloth — and wish for such an- 
other honest hostess, as Izaak Walton has described 
many a one on the pleasant banks of the Lea, when he 
went a-fishing — and sometimes they would prove oblig- 
-mg enough, and sometimes they would look grudgingly 



150 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELU. 

upon US— but we Lad cheerful loots still for one another, 
and would eat our plain food savorily, scarcely grudging 
Piscator his Trout Hall ? Now, when we go out a day's 
pleasuring, which is seldom moreover, we ride part of 
the way, and go into a fine inn, and order the best of 
dinners, never debating the expense — which, after all, 
never has half the relish of those chance country snaps, 
when we were at the mercy of uncertain usage and a 
precarious welcome. 

" You are too proud to see a play anywhere now but 
in the pit or boxes. Do you remember where it was we 
used to sit, when we saw the 'Battle of Hexham,' and 
the ' Surrender of Calais,' and Bannister and Mrs. Eland 
in the ' Children in the Wood ' — when we squeezed out 
our shillings apiece to sit three or four times in a season 
in the one-shilling gallery — where you felt all the time 
that you ought not to have brought me, and more strong- 
ly T felt obligation to you for having brought me — and 
the pleasure was the better for a little shame — and when 
the curtain drew up, what cared we for our place in the 
house, or what mattered it where we were sitting, when 
our thoughts were with Eosalind in Arden, or with Viola 
at the Court of Illyria? You used to say that the gallery 
was the best place of all for enjoying a play socially ; 
that the relish of such exhibitions must be in proportion 
to the infrequency of going; that the company we met 
there, not being in general readers of plays, were obliged 
to attend the more, and did attend, to what was going 
on, on the stage — because a word lost would have been a 
chasm, which it was impossible for them to fill up. With 
such reflections we consoled our pride then ; and I ap- 
peal to you whether, as a woman, I met generally with 
less attention and acQOCunod&tion than I have done since 



OLD CHIKA. 151 

k mot-e expensive situations in the house ? The getting 
in tnaeed, and the crowding up those inconvenient stair- 
cawes, was bad enough ; but there was still a law of civility 
to woman recognized to quite as great an extent as we 
ever found in the other passages ; and how a little ditfi= 
culty overcome heightened the snug seat and the play 
afterward ! Now we can only pay our money and walk 
in. You can not see, you say, in the galleries now. I 
am sure we saw, and heard too, well enough then ; but 
sight and all, I think, is gone with our poverty. 

"There was pleasure in eating strawberries before 
they became quite common — in the first dish of peas, 
while they were yet dear — to have them for a nice sup- 
per, a treat. What treat can we have now ? If we were 
to treat ourselves now — that is, to have dainties a little 
above our means — it would be selfish and wicked. It is 
the very little more that we allow ourselves beyond what 
the actual poor can get at, that makes what I call a treat 
— when two people living together, as we have done, 
now and then indulge themselves in a cheap luxury, 
which both like, while each apologizes, and is willing to 
take both halves of the blame to his single share. I see 
no harm in people making much of themselves, in that 
sense of the word ; it may give them a hint how to make 
much of others. But now — what I mean by the word — 
we never do make much of ourselves. None but the 
poor can do it. I do not mean the veriest poor of all, 
but persons as we were, just above poverty. 

"I know what you were going to say, that it is 
mighty pleasant at the end of the year to make all meet; 
and much ado we used to have every Thirty-first night 
ot December to account for our exceedings ; many a long 
face did you make over yoar puzzled accounts, and in 



152 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

contriving to make it out how we had spent so much— 
or that we had not spent so much — or that it was im- 
possible we should spend, so much next' year; and stUl 
we found our slender capital decreasing. But then, be- 
twixt ways, and projects, and compromises of one sort 
DY another, and talk of curtailing this charge, and doing 
without that for the future, and the hope that youth 
brings, and laughing spirits (in which you were never 
poor till now), we pocketed up our loss, and in con- 
clusion, with ' lusty brimmers ' (as you used to quote it 
out of hearty cheerful Mr. Cotton, as you called him)^ 
we used to welcome in the ' coming guest.' Now we 
have no reckoning at all at the end of the old year — no 
flattering promises about the new year doing better .for 
us." 

Bridget is so sparing of her speech on most occasions, 
that when she gets into a rhetorical vein, I am careful 
how I interrupt it. I could not help, however, smiling 
at the phantom of wealth which her dear imagination had 

conjured up out of a clear income of poor hundred 

pounds a year. "It is true we were happier when we 
were poorer, but we were also younger, my cousin. I 
am afraid we must put up with the excess, for if we were 
"> shake the superflux into the sea, we should not much 
j[iend ourselves. That we had so much to struggle with 
as we grew up together, we have reason to be most 
thankful. It strengthened and knit our compact closer. 
We could never have been what we have been to each 
other, if we had always had the sufficiency wliich you 
now complain of. The resisting power — those natural 
dilations of the youthful spirit, which circumstances can 
not straiten — with us are long since passed away. Com- 
petence to age is supplementary youth — a sorry supple 



THE CHILD ANGEL: A DKEAM. I53 

ment indeed, but I fear the best that is to be had. We 
must ride where we formerly walked ; live better and 
lie softer— and shall be wise to do so— than we had 
means to do in those good old days you speak of. Yet 
could those days return— could you and I once more 
walk our thirty miles a~day— could Bannister and Mrs, 
Bland again be young, and you and T be young to see 
them — could the good old one-shilling gallery days re- 
turn — they are dreams, my cousin, now — but could you 
and I at this moment, instead of this quiet argument by 
our well-carpeted fireside, sitting on this luxurious sofa, 
be once more struggling up those inconvenient staircases, 
pushed about, and squeezed, and elbowed by the poorest 
rabble of poor gallery scramblers— could I once more 
hear those anxious shrieks of yours, and the delicious 
Thank God, we are safe, which always followed when 
the topmost stair, conquered, let in the first light of the 
whole cheerful theatre down beneath us— I know not the 
fathom line tliat ever touched a descent so deep as I 
would be willing to bury more wealth in than Croesus 
had, or the great Jew R is supposed to have, to pur- 
chase it. 

" And now do just look at that merry Chinese little 
waiter holding an umbrella, big enough for a bed-tester, 
over the head of that pretty insipid half Madonna-isb 
chit of a lady in that very blue summer-house." 



THE CHILD ANGEL: A DREAM. 

I CHANGED upon the prettiest, oddest, fantastical thing 
of a dream the other night, that you shall hear of. I 
bad been reading the "Loves of the Angels,"and went 



154 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIAc 

to bed with my head full of speculations suggested by 
that extraordinary legend. It had given birth to innu- 
merable conjectures ; and I remember the last waking 
thought, which I gave expression to on my pillow, was 
a sort of wonder " what could come of it." 

I was suddenly transported, how or whither I could 
scarcely make out — but to some celestial region. It 
was not the real heavens neither — not the downright 
Bible-heaven- -but a kind of fairyland heaven, about 
which a poor human fancy may have leave to sport and 
air itself, I will hope, without presumption. 

Methought — what wild things dreams are! — I was 
present — at what would you imagine? — at an angel's 
gossiping. 

Whence it came, or how it came, or who bid it come, 
or whether it came purely of its own head, neither you 
nor I know ; but there lay, sure enough, wrapt in its lit- 
tle cloudy swaddling-bands — a Child Angel. 

Sun-threads — filmy beams — ran through the celestial 
napery of what seemed its princely cradle. All the 
winged orders hovered round, watching when the new- 
born should open its yet closed eyes; which, when it 
did, first one, and then the other — with a solicitude and 
apprehension, yet not such as, stained with fear, dims 
the expanding eyelids of mortal infants, but as if to ex- 
plore its path in those its unhereditary palaces — what 
an inextinguishable titter that time spared not celestial 
Tisages ! Nor wanted there to my seeming — oh the in- 
explicable simpleness of dreams ! — bowls of that cheering 

nectar 

.... which mortals caudle call below. 

N"or were wanting laces of female ministrants, stricken 
in years, as it might seem, so dexterous were those heav* 



THE CHILD ANGEL: A DREAM. 155 

enly attendants to counterfeit kindly similitudes of earth, 
to greet with terrestrial child-rites the young Present 
which earth had made to heaven. 

Then were celestial harpings heard, not in full, sym- 
phony as those by which the spheres are tutored, but as 
loudest instruments on earth speak oftentimes, muffled, 
80 to accommodate their sound the better to the weak eare 
of the imperfect-born. And, with the noise of tnose 
subdued soundings, the Angelet sprang forth, fluttering 
its rudiments of pinions — but forthwith flagged and was 
recovered into the arms of those full-winged angels. 
And a wonder it was to see how, as years went round in 
heaven — a year in dreams is as a day — continually its 
white shoulders put forth buds of wings, but, wanting 
the perfect angelic nutriment, anon was shorn of its as- 
piring, and fell fluttering — still caught by angel hards — 
for -ever to put forth shoots, and to fall fluttering, be- 
cause its birth was not of the unmixed vigor of heaven. 

And a name was given to the Babe Angel, and it was 
to be called Ge-Urania, because its production was of 
earth and heaven. 

And it could not taste of death, by reason of its 
adoption into immortal palaces ; but it was to know 
weakness, and reliance, and the shadow of human imbe- 
cility ; and it went with a lame gait ; but in its goings it 
exceeded all mortal children in grace and swiftness. 
Then pity first sprang up in angelic bosoms, and yearn- 
ings (like the human) touched them at the sight of the 
immortal lame one. 

And with pain did then first those Intuitive Essences, 
with pain and strife, to their natures (not grief), put 
back their bright intelligences, and reduce their ethereal 
winds, schooling them to degrees and slower processes, 



156 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

80 to adapt their lessons to the gradual illumination (as 
must needs be) of the half-earth-born ; and what intui- 
tive notices they could not repeal (by reason that their 
nature is to know all things at once), the half-heavenly 
novice, by the better part of its nature, aspired to receive 
into its understanding ; so that Humility and Aspiration 
went on even-paced in the instruction of glorious Am 
phibium. 

But, by reason that Mature Humanity is too gross to 
breathe the air of that super-subtile region, its portion 
was, and is, to be a child for ever. 

And because the human part of it might not pres« 
into the heart and inwards of the palace of its adoption, 
those full-natured angels tended it by turns in the pu^-' 
lieus of the palace, where were shady groves and rivu- 
lets, like this green earth from which it came : so Love^ 
with Voluntary Humility, waited upon the entertain 
ment of the new adopted. 

And myriads of years rolled round (in dreams Time 
is nothing), and still it kept, and is to keep, perpetual 
childhood, and is the Tutelar Genius of Childhood upon 
earth, and still goes lame and lovely. 

By the banks of the river Pison is seen, lone sitting 
by the grave of the terrestrial Mirzah, whom the angel 
Nadir loved, a Child ; but not the same which I saw in 
heaven. A pensive hue overcasts its lineaments; never- 
theless, a correspondency is between the child by the 
grave and that celestial orphan whom I saw above ; and 
the dimness of the grief upon the heavenly is a shadow 
or emblem of that which stains the beauty of the terres- 
trial. And this correspondency is not to be understood 
but by dreams. 

And in the archives of heaven I had grace to re^-d 



CONFESStONS OP A JRCrNKAIti). 151 

how that once the angel !N'adir, being exiled from his 
place for mortal passion, upspringing on the wings ot 
parental love (such pov^er had parental love for a mo- 
ment to suspend the else irrevocable law), appeared for 
a brief instant in his station, and, depositing a wondrous 
Birth, straightway disappeared, and the palaces knew 
Mm no more. And this charge wa& the self-same Babe 
who goeth lame and lovely ; but Miraa\ sleepeth by the 
river Pison. 



OOl^FESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. \ 

Dehoetations from the use of strong liquors have \ 
been the favorite topic of sober declaimers in .•■'1 ages, 
and have been received with abundance of appi jse by 
water-drinking critics. But with the patient liimself, 
the man that is to be cured, unfortunately their sound 
has seldom prevailed. Yet the evil is acknowledged, the 
remedy simple. Abstain. No force can oblige a man to 
raise the glass to his head against his will. 'Tis as easy 
as not to steal, not to tell lies. 

Alas ! the hand to pilfer, and the tongue to bear false 
witness, have no constitutional tendency. These are 
actions indifferent to them. At the first instance of the 
reformed will, they can be brought off without a mur- 
mur. The itching finger is but a figure in speech, and 
the tongue of the liar can with the same natural delight 
give forth useful truths with which it has been accus- 
tomed to scatter their pernicious contraries. But when 
a man has commenced sot — 

O pause, thou sturdy moralist, thou pei'son of stout 



158 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

nerves and a strong head, whose liver is happily un- 
touched, and ere thy gorge riseth at the name which 1 
have written, first learn what the thing is ; how much 
of compassion, how much of human allowance, thou 
mayest virtuously mingle with thy disapprobation, 
Trample not on the ruins of a man. Exact not, undeJ 
so terrible a penalty as infamy, a resuscitation from a 
state of death almost as real as that from which Lazarus 
rose not but by a miracle. 

Begin a reformation, and custom will make it easy. 
But what if the beginning be dreadful, the first steps not 
like climbing a mountain, but going through fire ? what 
if the whole system must undergo a change violent as 
that which we conceive of the mutation of form in some 
insects? what if a process comparable to flaying alive be 
to be <^Dne through? Is the weakness that sinks under 
such '-ruggles to be confounded with the pertinacity 
which clings to other vices, which have induced no con- 
stitutional necessity, no engagement of the whole victim, 
body and soul ? 

I have known one in that state, when he has tried to 
abstain but for one evening — though the poisonous po- 
tion had long ceased to bring back its first enchantments, 
though he was sure it would rather deepen his gloom 
than brighten it — in the violence of the struggle, and the 
necessity he has felt of getting rid of the present sensa- 
tion at any rate, I hsve known him to scream out, to 
cry aloud, for the anguish and pain of the strife within 
him. 

Why should I hesitate to declare that the man of 
whom I speak is myself? I have no puling apology to 
make to mankind. I see them all in one way or another 
deviating from the pure reason. It is to my own nature 



THE CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. isg 

alcffie I am accountable for the woe tliat I have brought 
upon it. 

I believe that there are constitutions, robust heads 
and iron insides, whom scarce any excesses can hurt^ 
whom brandy (1 have seen them drink it like wine), at 
all events, whom wine, taken in ever so plentiful a mea- 
sure, can do no worse injury to than just to muddle 
their faculties, perhaps never very pellucid. On them 
this discourse is wasted. They would but laugh at a 
weak brothel', who, trying his strength with them, and 
coming off foiled from the contest, would fain persuade 
%em that such agonistic exercises are dangerous. It is 
to a very different description of persons I speak. It is 
to the weak, the nervous ; to those who feel the want of 
some artificial aid to raise their spirits in society to what 
is no more than the ordinary pitch of all around them 
without it. This is the secret of our drinking. Such 
must fly the convivial board in the first instance, if they 
do not mean to sell themselves for term of life. 

Twelve years ago I had completed my six-and-twen- 
tieth year. I had lived from the period of leaving school 
to that time pretty much in solitude. My companions 
were chiefly books, or at most one or two living ones of 
my own book-loving and sober stamp. I rose early, went 
to bed betimes, and the faculties which God had given 
me, I have reason to think, did not rust in me unused. 

About that time I fell in with some companions of a 
different order. They were men of boisterous spirits, 
sitters up a-nights, disputants, drunken, yet seemed to 
have something noble about them. We dealt about the 
wit, or what passes for it after midnight, jovially. O! 
the quality called fancy I certainly possessed a larger 
share than my companions. Encouraged by their ap 



160 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

plause, I set up for a professed joker ! — I, who of all 
men am least fitted for such an occupation, having, in 
addition to the greatest difiiculty which I experience at 
ail times of finding words to express my meaning, a nat- 
ural nervous impediment in my speech ! 

Reader, if yoa are gifted with nerves like mine, aspire 
bo any character but that of &. wit. When you find a tick=. 
ling relish upon your tongue disposing you to that sort 
of conversation, especially if you find a preternatural 
flow of ideas setting in upon you at the sight of a bottle 
and fresh glasses, avoid giving way to it as you would fly 
your greatest destruction. If you can not crush the 
power of fancy, or that within you which you mistake 
for such, divert it, give it some other play. Write an 
essay, pen a character or description — but not, as I do 
now, with tears trickling down your cheeks. 

To be an object of compassion to friends, of derision 
to foes ; to be suspected by strangers, stared at by fools ; 
to be esteemed dull when you can not be witty, to be ap- 
plauded for witty when you know you have been dull; 
to be called upon for the extemporaneous exercise of 
that faculty which no premeditation can give ; to be 
spurred on to efforts which end in contempt ; to be set 
on to provoke mirth which procures the procurer hatred ; 
to give pleasure and be paid with squinting malice ; to 
swallow draughts of life-destroying wine which are to 
be distilled into airy breath to tickle vain auditors ; to 
mortgage miserable morrows for nights of madness; to 
waste whole seas of time upon those who pay it back in 
little inconsiderable drops of drudging applause, are the 
wages of buffoonery and death. 

Time, which has a sure stroke at dissolving all con- 
nections which have no solider fastening than this liquid 



THE CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 161 

cement, more kind to me than my own taste or pene- 
tration, at length opened mj eyes to the supposed quali- 
ties of my first friends. No trace of them is left but in 
the vices which they introduced, and the habits they in- 
fixed. In them my friends survive still, and exercise 
ample retribution for any supposed infidelity that I may 
have been guilty of toward them. 

My next more immediate companions were and are 
persons of such intrinsic and felt worth that, though ac- 
cidentally their acquaintance has proved pernicious to 
me, I do not know that if the thing were to do over 
again, I should have the courage to eschew the mischief 
at the price of forfeiting the benefit. I came to them 
reeking from the steams of my late overheated notions 
of companionship ; and the slightest fuel which they un- 
consciously afforded was suflScient to feed my old fires 
into a propensity. 

They were no drinkers, but, one from professional 
habits, and another from a custom derived from his 
father, smoked tobacco. The devil could not have de- 
vised a more subtle trap to retake a backsliding penitent. 
The transition, from gulping down draughts of liquid fire 
to puffing out innocuous blasts of dry smoke, was so like 
cheating him. But he is too hard for us when we hope 
to commute. He beats us at barter, and when we think 
to set off a new failing against an old infirmity, 'tis odds ^ 
but he puts the trick upon us of two for one. That I 
(comparatively) white devil of tobacco brought with him i 
in the end seven worse than himself. ^ 

It were impertinent to carry the reader through all 

the processes by which, from smoking at first with malt 

liquor, T took m}' degrees through thin wines, through 

stronger wine and water, through small punch, to those 

11 



) 



163 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELiii. 

juggling compositions which, nnder the name of mixed 
liquors, slur a great deal of hrandy or other poison under 
less and less water continually, until thej come next to 
none, and so to none at all. But it is hateful to disclose 
the secrets of my Tartarus. 

I should repel my readers, from a mere incapacity of 
believing me, were I to tell them what tohacco has heen 
to me, the drudging service which I have paid, the slav- 
ery which I have vowed to it. How, when I have re- 
solved to quit it, a feeling as of ingratitude has started 
up ; how it has put on personal claims and made the de- 
mands of a friend upon me. How the reading of it casu- 
ally in a book, as where Adams takes his whiff in the 
chimney-corner of some inn in "Joseph Andrews," or 
Piscator in the " Complete Angler " breaks his fast upon 
the morning pipe in that delicate room Piscatoribus Sac- 
rum, has in a moment broken down the resistance of 
weeks. How a pipe was ever in my midnight path be- 
fore me, till the vision forced me to realize it ; how then 
its ascending vapors curled, its fragrance lulled, and the 
thousand delicious rainisterings conversant about it, em- 
ploying every faculty, extracted the sense of pain. How 
from illuminating it came to darken, from a quick solace 
it turned to a negative relief, thence to a restlessness and 
dissatisfaction, thence to a positive misery. How, even 
now, when the whole secret stands confessed in all its 
dreadful truth before me, I feel myself linked to it be- 
yond the power of revocation. Bone of my bone 

Persons not accustomed to examine the motives of 
their actions, to reckon up the countless nails that rivet 
the chains of habit, or perhaps being bound by none so 
obdurate as those I have confessed to, may recoil from 
this as from an overcharged picture. But what short of 



THE CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 168 

such a bondage is it, which, in spite of protesting friends, 
a weeping wife, and a reprobating world, chains down 
many a poor fellow, of no original indisposition to good- 
ness, to his pipe and his pot ? 

I have seen a print after Correggio, in which three 
female figures are ministering to a man who sits fast 
bound at the root of a tree. Sensuality is soothing him, 
Evil Habit is naihng him to a branch, and Repugnance 
at the same instant of time is applying a snake to his 
«ide. In his face is feeble delight, the recollection of 
past rather than perception of present pleasures, languid 
enjoyment of evil with utter imbecility to good, a Syba- 
ritic effeminacy, a submission to bondage, the springs of 
the will gone down like a broken clock, the sin and the 
suffering co-instantaneous, or the latter forerunning the 
former, remorse preceding action— all this represenced 
in one point of time. When I saw this, I admired the 
wonderful skill of the painter. But when I went away, 
I wept, because I thought of my own condition. 

Of that there is no hope that it should ever change. 
The waters have gone over me. But out of the black 
depths, could I be heard, I would cry out to all those 
who have but set a foot in the perilous flood. Could the 
youth, to whom the flavor of his first wine is dehcious as 
the opening scenes of life or the entering upon some 
newly discovered paradise, look into my desolation, and 
be made to understand what a dreary thing it is when a 
man shall feel himself going down a precipice with open 
eyes and a passive will ; to see his destruction and have 
no power to stop it, and yet to feel it all the way em- 
anating from himself; to perceive all goodness emptied 
out of him, and yet not to be able to forget a time when 
it was otherwise ; to bear about the piteous spectacle of | 



1 



164 fHE LAST Assays of m^ik. 

his own self-ruins : could he see my fevered eye, feverish 
with last night's drinking, and feverishly looking for this 
night's repetition of the folly ; could he feel the body of 
the death out of which I cry hourly with feebler and 
feebler outcry to be delivered — ^it were enough to make 
him dash the sparkling beverage to the earth in all the 
pride of its mantling temptation ; to make him clasp hi£ 
teeth, 

.... and not undo 'em 
To suffer wet damnation to run thro' 'em. 

Yea, but (methinks I hear somebody object) if so- 
briety be that fine thing you would have us to under- 
stand, if the comforts of a cool brain are to be preferred 
to that state of heated excitement which you describe 
and deplore, what hinders in your instance that you do 
not return to those habits from which you would induce 
others never to swerve? If the blessing be worth pre- 
serving, is it not worth recovering? 

Recovering f Oh, if a wish could transport me back 
to those days of youth, when a draught from the next 
clear spring could slake any heats which summer sun^ 
and youthful exercise kad power to stir up in the blood, 
how gladly would I return to thee, pure element, the 
drink of children, and of child -like holy hermit! In my 
dreams I can sometimes fancy thy cool refreshment purl- 
ing over my burning tongue. But my waking stomach 
yejects it. That which refreshes innocence only makes 
me sick and faint. 

But is there no middle way betwixt total abstinence 
and the excess which kills you? For your sake, reader, 
and that you may never attain to my experience, with 
pain I must utter the dreadful truth, that there is none— 



TEE CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 1^< 

none that I can find. In my stage of habit (I speak no^ 
of habits less confirmed— for some of them I believe the 
advice to be most prudential), in the stage which I have 
reached, to stop short of that measure which is suflScient 
to draw on torpor and sleep, the benumbing apoplectic 
sleep of the drunkard, is to have taken none at all. The 
pain of the self-denial is all one. And what that is, I 
had rather the reader should believe on my credit than 
know from his own trial. He will come to know it, 
whenever he shall arrive in that state in which, paradoxi- 
cal as it may appear, reason shall only visit Mm through 
tntoxication ; for it is a fearful truth that the intellectual 
farulties, by repeated acts of intemperance, may be dri\- 
eu from their orderly sphere of action, their clear day- 
light ministries, until they shall be brought at last to 
depend for the faint manifestation of their departing en- 
ergies upon the returning periods of the fatal madness to 
which they owe their devastation. The drinking man is < 
never less himself than during his sober intervals. Evil 
is so far his good.* 

Behold me then, in the robust period of life, reduced 
to imbecility and decay. Hear me count my gains, and 
the profits whicli I have derived from the midnight cup. 
Twelve years ago I was possessed of a healthy frame 
of mind and body. I was never strong, but I think my 
constitution (for a weak one) was as happily exempt from 

* When poor M painted his iast picture, with a pencil in 

one trembling hand and a glass of brandy and water in the other, 
his fingers owed the comparative steadiness with which they 
were enabled to go through their task in an imperfect manner, to 
a temporary firmness derived from a repetition of practices, the 
general effect of which had shaken both them and him so ter^ 
fibly. 



166 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

the tendency to any malady as it was possible to be. 1 
scarce knew what it was to ail anything. Now, except 
when I am losing myself in a sea of drink, I am nev^er 
free from those uneasy sensations in head and stomach 
which are so much worse to bear than any definite pains 
or aches. 

At that time I was seldom in bed after six in the 
morning, summer and winter. I awoke refreshed, and 
seldom without some merry thoughts in my head, or 
some piece of a song to welcome the new-born day. 
Now, the first feeling which besets me, after stretching 
out the hours of recumbence to their last possible extent, 
is a forecast of the wearisome day that lies before me, 
with a secret wish that I could have lain on still, or never 
awaked. 

Life itself, my waking life, has much of the confusion, 
the trouble, and obscure perplexity of an ill dream. In 
the daytime I stumble upon dark mountains. 

Business, which, though never very particularly 
adapted to my nature, yet as something of necessity to 
be gone through, and therefore best undertaken with 
cheerfulness, I used to enter upon with some degree of 
alacrity, now wearies, affrights, perplexes me. I fancy 
all sorts of discouragements, and am ready to give up an 
occupation which gives me bread, from a harassing con- 
ceit of incapacity. The slightest commission given me 
by a friend, or any small duty which I have to perform 
lor myself, as giving orders to a tradesman, etc., haunts 
ne as a labor impossible to be got through. So much 
^he springs of action are broken. 

The same cowardice attends me in all my intercourse 
with mankind. I dare not promise that a friend's honor 
or Ms causa would be safe in my keeping, if I were put 



T'^iE CONFESSIONS Oi^ A f)RUNKAftD. l6t 

to the expense of any manly resolution in defending it. 
^(So much the springs of moral action are deadened within 
me. 

My favorite occupations in times past now cease to 
entertain. I can do nothing readily. Application for 
ever so short a time kills me. This poor abstract of my 
coadition was penned at long intervals, with scarcely 
any attempt at connection of thought, which is now diffi- 
cult to me. 

The noble passages which formerly delighted me in 
history or poetic fiction, now only draw a few weak 
tears, allied to dotage. My broken and dispirited nature 
seems to sink before anything great and admirable. 

I perpetually catch myself in tears, for any cause or 
none. It is inexpressible how much this infirmity adds 
to a sense of shame and a general feeling of deteriora- 
tion. 

These are some of the instances, concerning which I 
can say with truth that it was not always so with me. 

Shall I lift up the veil of my weakness any further ? 
or is this disclosure sufficient ? 

I am a poor nameless egotist, who have no vanity to 
consult by Confessions. I know not whether I shall be 
laughed at, or heard seriously. Such as they are, I com- 
mend them to the reader's attention, if he find his own 
case any way touched. I have told him what I am come 
to. Let him stop in time. 



168 T'HE LAST ESSAYS OP ELIA. 



POPULAE FALLACIES. 

That a 'bully is always a coward. — Thisj ax'iom con- 
tains a principle of compensation, which disposes us to 
admit tlie truth of it. But there is no safe trusting to 
dictionaries and definitions. We should more willingly 
fall in with this popular language, if we did not find 
brutality sometimes awkwardly coupled with 'valor in 
the same vocabulary. The comic writers, with their 
poetical justice, have contributed not a little to mislead 
us upon this point. To see a hectoring fellow exposed 
and beaten upon the stage, has something in it wonder- 
fully diverting. Some people's share of animal spirits 
is notoriously low and defective. It has not strength to 
raise a vapor, or furnish out the wind of a tolerable 
bluster. These love to be told that huffing is no part of 
valor. The truest courage with them is that which is 
the least noisy and obtrusive. But confront one of these 
silent heroes with the swagger of real life, and his confi- 
dence in the theory quickly vanishes. Pretensions do 
not uniformly bespeak non-performance. A modest, in- 
offensive deportment does not necessarily imply valor ; 
neither does the absence of it justify us in denying that 
quality. Hickman wanted modesty — we do not mean 
him of Clarissa — but who ever doubted his courage? 
Even the poets — upon whom this equitable distribution 
of qualities should be most binding — have thought it 
agreeable to nature to depart from the rule upon occa- 
sion. Harapha, in the " Agonistes," is indeed a bully 
upon the received notions. Milton has made him at 
once a blusterer, a giant, and a dastard. But Almanzor, 
In Dryden, talks of driving armies singly before him— 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 16& 

an<l does it. Tom Brown had a shrewder insight into 
this kind of character than either of his predecessors. 
He divides the palm more equably, and allows his hero 
a sort of dimidiate preeminence : " Bully Dawson kicked 
by half the town, and half the town kicked by Bully 
Dawson." This was true distributive justice. 

That ill-gotten gain never prospers. — The weakest 
part of mankind have this saj'ing commonest in their 
mouth. It is the trite consolation administered to the 
easy dupe, when he has been tricked out of his money 
or estate, that the acquisition of it will do the owner no 
go'id. But the rogues of this world — the prudenter part 
of them, at least — know better; and if the observation 
hg.d been as true as it is old, they would not have failed 
by this time to discover it. They have pretty sharp 
distinctions of the fluctuating and the permanent. "Light- 
ly come, lightly go," is a proverb which they can very 
well afford to leave, when they leave little else, to the 
losers. They do not always find manors got by rapine 
or chicanery insensibly to melt away, as the poets will 
have it ; or that all gold glides, like thawing snow, from 
the thief's hand that grasps it. Church land alienated 
to lay uses was formerly denounced to have this slippery 
quality. But some portions of it somehow always stuck 
so fast, that the denunciators have been fain to postpone 
the prophecy of refundment to a late posterity. 

Tliat a man onust not laugh at his own jest. — The 
severest exaction surely ever invented upon the self- 
denial of poor human nature ! This is to expect a gen- 
tleman to give a treat without partaking of it ; to sit 
esurient at his own table, and commend the flavor of his 
yeaison upon the absurd strength of his never touching 



170 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELU. 

it himseli. On tlie contrary, we love to see a -wag taste 
his own joke to Ms party; to watch a quirk or meiry 
conceit flickering upon the lips some seconds before the 
tongue is delivered of it. If it be good, fresh, and 
racy, begotten of the occasion — if he that utters it never 
thought it before, he is naturally the first to be tickled 
with it ; and any suppression of such complacence we 
hold to be churlish and insulting. What does it seem to 
imply, but that your company is weak or foolish enough 
to be moved by an image or a fancy that shall stir you 
not at all, or but faintly ? This is exactly the humor of 
the fine gentleman in " Mandeville," who, while he daz- 
zles his guests with the display of some costly toy, aflfects 
himself to see " nothing considerable in it." 

That such a one shows his breeding ; that it is easy to 
perceive he is no gentleman. — A speech from the poorest 
sort of people, which always indicates that the party 
vituperated is a gentleman. The very fact which they 
deny is that which galls and exasperates them to use 
this language. The forbearance with which it is usually 
received is a proof what interpretation the bystander 
sets upon it. Of a kin to this, and still less politic, are 
the phrases with which, in their street rhetoric, they ply 
one another more grossly : He is a poor creature ; he has 
not a rag to cover , etc. ; though this last, we con- 
fess, is more frequently applied by females to females. 
They do not perceive that the satire glances upon them- 
selves. A poor man, of all things in the world, should 
not upbraid an antagonist with poverty. Are there no 
other topics — as, to tell him his father was hanged — his 

sister made a , without exposing a secret which 

should be kept snug betweep> them, and doing an affront 



POPULAR FALLACIES. I7I 

to the order vo which they have the honor equally to 
belong ? All rhis while they do not see how the wealth- 
ier man stands by and laughs in his sleeve at both. 

That the poor copy the vices of the rich. — A smooth 
text tQ the letter ; and preached from the pulpit, is sure 
of a fiocile audience from the pews lined with satin. Ife 
is twice sitting upon velvet to a foolish squire to be told 
that he — and not perverse nature^ as the homilies would 
make us imagine — is the true cause of all the irregularis 
ties in his parish. This is striking at the root of free 
will indeed, and denying the originality of sin in any 
sense. But men are not such implicit sheep as this comes 
to. If the abstinence from evil on the part of the upper 
classes is to derive itself from no higher principle than 
the apprehension of setting ill patterns to the lower, we 
beg leave to discharge them from all squeamishness on 
that score : they may even take their fill of pleasures 
where they can find them. The Genius of Poverty, 
hampered and straitened as it is, is not so barren of in- 
vention, but it can trade upon the staple of its own vice, 
without drawing upon their capital. The poor are not 
quite such servile imitators as thoy take them for. Some 
of thein are very clever artists in their way. Here and 
there we find an original. Who taught the poor to steal, 
tD pilfer? They do not go to the great for schoolmasters 
in these faculties, surely. It is well if in some vices 
they allow us to be — no copyists. In no other sense is it 
true that the poor copy them, than as servants may be 
said to tahe after their masters and mistresses, when 
they succeed to their reversionary cold meats. If the 
master, from indisposition or some other cause, neglect 
his food, the servant dines notwithstanding. 



172 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

"Oh, but (some will say) the force of ex»mr.«i<tf e 
great." We knew a lady who was so scrupulous on viis 
head, that she would put up with the callb ot tnu most 
impertineiit visitor rather that kt her sei-vant say she 
was not at home, for fear of teaching her mala to tell 
an untruth ; and this in the very face of tnes fact, which 
she knew well enough, that the wench was one of the 
greatest liars upon the earth without teacnlng ; so much 
so that her mistress possibly never heara two words of 
consecutive truth from her in her life. I5ut nature mast 
go for nothing : example must be everything. This liar 
in grain, who never opened her mouili without a lie, 
must be guarded against a remote mterence, which she 
(pretty casuist !) might possibly draw from a form of 
words — literally false, but essentially deceiving no one — 
that under some circumstances a no might not be so ex 
ceedingly sinful — a fiction, too, not at all in her own 
way, or one that she could be Jsuspected of adopting, for 
few servant-wenches care to be aenied to visitors. 

This word example reminds us of another fine wt^rd 
which is in use upon these occasions — eiimuragement, 
" People in our sphere must not be thought to give en- 
couragement to such proceeamgs." To such a frantic 
height is this principle capaoie of being carried, that we 
have known individuals wno liave thought it within the 
scope of their influence to sanction despair and give eclat 
to — suicide. A domestic m the family of a county mem- 
ber lately deceased, from love, or some unknown cause, 
cut his throat, but not successfully. The poor fellow 
was otherwise much loved and respected ; and great in- 
terest was used in his toehalf, upon his recovery, that be 
might be permitted to retain nis place ; his word beitog 
first pledged, not without some substantial sponsors tp 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 173 

promise for him, that the like should never happen again. 
His master was inclinable to keep him, but his mistress 
thought otherwise ; and John in the end was dismissed, 
her ladyship declaring that she "could not think of 
encouraging any such doings in the county." 

That enough is as good as a feast. — Not a man, wo^ 
man, or child, in ten miles round Guildhall, who really 
believes this saying. The inventor of it did not believe 
it himself. It was made in revenge by somebody who 
was disappointed of a regale. It is a vile cold-scrag-of- 
mutton sophism; a lie palmed upon the palate, which 
knows better things. If nothing else could be said for a 
feast, this is sufficient, that from the superflux there is 
usually something left for the next day. Morally inter- 
preted, it belongs to a class of proverbs which have a 
tendency to make us undervalue money. Of this cast are 
those notable observations, that money is not health; 
riches can not purchase everything ; the metaphor which 
makes gold to be mere muck, with the morality which 
traces fine clothing to the sheep's back, and denounces 
pearl as the unhandsome excretion of an oyster. Hence, 
too, the phrase which imputes dirt to acres — a sophistry 
so barefaced, that even the literal sense of it is true only 
in a wet season. This, and abundance of similar sage 
saws assuming to inculcate content, we verily believe to 
have been the invention of some cunning borrower, who 
had designs upon the purse of his wealthier neighbor, 
which he could only hope to carry by force of these ver- 
bal jugglings. Translate any one of these sayings out of 
the artful metonyme which envelops it, and the trick is 
apparent. Goodly legs and shoulders of mutton, exhila- 
rating cordials, books, pictures, the opportunities of see- 



It4 'fSE LAST ESSAYS OF ELtA. 

ing fotelgn countrie?, independence, heart' s-e/^se, a man's 
own time lo liiraself, are not Tnuck — however we may be 
pleased to scandalize with that appellation the faithful 
metal that provides them for us. 

Of two disputants the warmest is generally in the 
wrong. — Oar experience would lead us to quite an op- 
posite conclusion. Temper, indeed, is no test of truth i 
but warmth and earnestness are a proof at least of aman'a 
own conviction of the rectitude of that which be main- 
tains. Coolness is as often the result of an unprincipled 
indifference to truth or falsehood, as of a sober confi- 
dence in a man's own side in a dispute. Nothing is more 
insulting sometimes than the appearance of this philoso- 
phic temper. There is little Titubus, the stammering 
law-stationer in Lincoln's Inn : we have seldom known 
this shrewd little fellow engaged in an argument where 
we were were not convinced he had the best of it, if his 
tongue would but fairly have seconded him. When he 
has been spluttering excellent broken sense for an hour 
together, writhing and laboring to be delivered of the 
point of dispute — the very gist of the controversy knock- 
ing at his teeth, which like some obstinate iron grating 
still obstructed its deliverance — his puny frame convulsed 
and face reddening all over at an unfairness in the logic 
whicli he wanted articulation to expose, it has moved 
our gall to see a smooth portly fellow of an adversary, 
that cared not a button for the merits of the question, by 
merely laying his hand upon the head of the stationer, 
and desiring him to be calm (your tall disputants have 
always the advantage), with a provoking sneer carry the 
argument clean from him in the opinion of all the by- 
standers, who have gone away clearly convinced that 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 1"^5 

Titubus must have been in the wrong, because he was in 

a passioD ; and that Mr. , meauing his opponent, is 

one of the fairest, and at the same time one of the mc^st 
dispassionate arguers breathing. 

That verl)al allusions are not wit^ lecause they will not 
tear a translation — The same might be said of the witti- 
est local allusions. A custom is sometimes as difficult to 
explain to a foreigner as a pun. What would become of 
a great part of the wit of the last age if it were tried by 
this test ? How would certaiu topics, as aldermanity^ 
cuokoldry, have sounded to a Terentian auditory, though 
Terence himself had been alive to translate them? Sen- 
ator urhanus with Gurruca to boot for a synonyme, 
would but faintly have done the business. Words, in- 
volving notions, are hard enough to render ; it is too much 
to expect us to translate a sound, and give an elegant 
version to a jingle. The Yirgilian harmony is not trans- 
latable, but by substituting harmonious sounds in another 
language for it. To Latinize a pun, w^e must seek a pnn 
in Latin that will answer to it ; as, to give an idea of the 
double endings in Hudibras, we must have recourse to a 
similar practice in the old monkish doggerel. Dennis, 
the fiercest oppugner of puns in ancient or modern times, 
professes himself highly tickled with the " a stick," chim- 
ing to " ecclesiastic." Yet what is this, but a species of 
pun, a verbal consonance? 

That the worst puns are the test. — If by worst be oiily 
meant the most far-fetched and startling, we agree to it. 
A pun is not bound by the laws which limit nicer wit 
It is a pistol let off at the ear, not a feather to tickle the 
intellect. It is an antic wiiich does not stand upon man- 
ners, but comes bounding into the presence, and does not 



176 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

show the less comic for being dragged in sometimes by 
the head and shoulders. Wiiat though it limp a little, or 
prove defective in one leg — all the better. A pun may 
easily be too curious and artificial. Who has not at one 
time or other been at a party of professors (himself per- 
haps an old ofliender in that line), where, after ringing a 
round of the most ingenious conceits, every man con- 
tributing his shot, and some there the most expert shoot- 
ers of the day ; after making a poor word run the gant- 
let till it is ready to drop ; after hunting and winding it 
through all the possible ambages of similar sounds; after 
squeezing and hauling and tugging at it, till the very milk 
of it will not yield a drop further — suddenly some obscure, 
anthought-of fellow in a corner, who was never 'prentice 
CO the trade, whom the company for very pity passed 
over, as we do by a known poor man when a money-sub- 
scription is going round, no one calling upon him for his 
quota, has all at once come out with something so whim- 
sical, yet so pertinent — so brazen in its pretensions, 
yet so impossible to be denied — so exquisitely good, and 
60 deplorably bad at the same time — that it has proved 
a Eobin Hood's shot ? Anything ulterior to that is de- 
spaired of; and the party breaks up, unanimously voting 
it to be the very worst (that is, best) pun of the evening. 
This species of wit is the better for not being perfect in 
all its parts. What it gains in completeness, it loses in 
naturalness. The more exactly it satisfies the critical, 
the less hold it has upon some other faculties. The puns 
which are most entertaining are those which will least 
bear an analysis. Of this kind is the following, recorded 
with a sort of stigma in one of Swift's Miscellanies : 

An Oxford scholar, meeting a porter who was carry- 
ing a hare through the streets, accosts him with this ex- 



i>OPlTLAR FALLACIES. \<ft 

traordinary question : " Prithee, friend, is that thy own 
hare, or a wig ? " 

There is no excusing this, and no resisting it. A man 
might blur ten sides of paper in attempting a defense of 
it against a critic who should be laughter-proof. The 
quibble in itself is not considerable. It is only a new 
turn given by a little false pronunciation to a very com- 
mon, though not a very courteous inquiry. Put by one 
gentleman to another at a dinner-party, it would have 
been vapid ; to the mistress of the house, it would have 
shown much less wit than rudeness. We must take in 
the totality of time, place, and person : the pert look of 
the inquiring scholar, the desponding looks of the puzzled 
porter ; the one stopping at leisure, the other hurrying 
on with his burden ; the innocent though rather abrupt 
tendency of the first member of the question, with the 
utter and inextricable irrelevancy of the second ; the 
place — a public street — not favorable to frivolous inves- 
tigations ; the affrontive quality of the primitive inquiry 
(the common question) invidiously transferred to the de- 
rivative (the new turn given to it) in the implied satire ; 
namely, that few of that tribe are expected to eat of the 
good things which they carry, they being in most coun- 
tries considered rather as the temporary trustees than 
owners of such dainties — which the fellow was beginning 
to understand ; but then the wig again comes in, and he 
can make nothing of it; all put together constitute a 
Ificture. Hogarth could have made it intelligible on 
canvas. 

Yet nine out of ten critics will pronounce this a very 

bad pun, because of the defectiveness in the concluding 

member, which is its very beauty, and constitutes the 

surprise. The same person shall cry up for admirable 

12 



178 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELU. 

the cold quibble from Virgil about tbe broken Cremona* 
because it is made out in all its parts, and leaves noth'.iig 
to the imagination. We venture to call it cold ; because 
of thousands who have admired it, it would be difficult 
to find one who has heartily chuckled at it. As appeal- 
ing to the judgment merely (setting the risible faculty 
aside), we must pronounce it a monument of curious 
felicity. But as some stories applied by Swift to a lady's 
dress, or mantua as it was then termed, coming in con- 
tact with one of those fiddles called Oremonas, are said 
to be too good to be true, it may with equal truth be 
asserted of this biverbal allusion, that it is too good to be 
natural. One can not help suspecting that the incident 
was invented to fit the line. It would have been better 
had it been less perfect. Like some Yirgilian hemistichs, 
it has suffered by filling up. The nimium Vicina was 
enough in conscience ; the GremoncB afterward loads it. 
It is, in fact, a double pun, and we have always observed 
that a superfoetation in this sort of wit is dangerous. 
When a man has said a good thing, it is seldom politic to 
follow it up. We do not care to be cheated a second 
time ; or, perhaps, the mind of man (with reverence be 
it spoken) is not capacious enough to lodge two puns at 
a time. The impression, to be forcible, must be simul- 
taneous and undivided. 

That handsome is that handsome does. — Those "who 
use this proverb can never have seen Mrs. Conrady. 

The soul, if we may believe Plotinus, is a ray from 
the celestial beauty. As she partakes more or less of this 
heavenly light, she informs with corresponding charao* 

* Mantua vse miserse nimium Vicina Cremonae. 



POPULAR FALLACIES. l79 

ters the fleshly tenement which she chooses, and frames 
to herself a suitable mansion. 

All which only proves that the soul of Mrs. Conrady, 
in her preexistent state, was no great judge of architec- 
ture. 

To the same eifect, in a Hymn in honor of Beauty, 
divine Si[>enser, platonizinfff sings: 

" Every spirit as it is more pure, 
And hath in it the more of heavenly light, 
So it the fairer body doth procure 
To habit in, and it more fairly dight 
With cheerful grace and amiable sight. 
For of the soul the body form doth take : 
For soul is form and doth the body make." 

But Spenser, it is clear, never saw Mrs. Conrady. 

These poets, we find, are no safe guides in philoso- 
phy ; for here, in his very next stanza but one, is a sav- 
ing clause, which throws us all out again, and leaves us 
as much to seek as ever : 

'' Yet oft it falls, that many a gentle mind 
Dwells in deformed tabernacle drown'd, 
Either by chance, against the course of kind, 
Or through unaptness in the substance found, 
Which it assumed of some stubborn ground, 
That will not yield unto her form's direction. 
But is perform'd with some foul imperfection." 

From which it would follow that Spenser had seen 
somebody like Mrs. Conrady. 

The spirit of this good lady — ^her previous anima — ■ 
must have stumbled upon one of these untoward taber- 
nacles which he speaks of. A more rebellious commod- 



180 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

ity of clay for a ground, as tlie poet calls it, no gentle 
mind — and sure hers is one of the gentlest — ever had to 
deal with. 

Pondering upon her inexplicable visage — inexplicable, 
we mean, but by this modification of the theory — we 
have come to a conclusion that, if one must be plain, it 
is better to be plain all over, than, amidst a tolerable 
residue of features, to hang out one that shall be excep- 
tionable. No one can say of Mrs. Oonrady's counte- 
nance that it would be better if she had but a nose. It 
is impossible to pull her to pieces in this manner. We 
have seen tlie most malicious beauties of her own sex 
baffled in the attempt at a selection. The tout- ensemble 
defies particularizing. It is too complete — too consis- 
tent, as we may say— to admit of these invidious reserva- 
tions. It is not as if some Apelles had picked out here 
a lip and there a chin, out of the collected ugliness of 
Greece, to frame a model by. It is a symmetrical whole. 
Wq» challenge the minutest connoisseur to cavil at any 
part or parcel of the countenance m question ; to say 
that this or that is improperly placed. "We are con- 
vinced that true ugliness, no less than is affirmed of true 
beauty, is the result of harmony. Like that, too, it 
reigns without a competitor. No one ever saw Mrs. 
Oonrady without pronouncing her to be the plainest 
woman that he ever met with in the course of his life. 
The first time that you are indulged with a sight of her 
face is an era in your existence ever after. You are glad 
to have seen it — like Stonehenge. No one can ])retend 
to forget it. No one ever apologized to her for meet- 
ing her in the street on such a day and not knowing 
her : the pretext would be too bare. Nobody can mis- 
take her for another. Nobody can say of her, " I think 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 181 

I have seen that face somewhere, but I can not call to 
mind where." You must remember that in such a par- 
lor it first struck you — like a bust. You wondered 
where the owner of the house picked it up. You won- 
dered more when it began to move its lips — so mildly, 
too ! No one ever thought of asking her to sit for her 
picture. Lockets are for remembrance ; and it w^ould be 
clearly superfluous to hang an image at your heart, 
which, once seen, can never be out of it. It is not a 
mean face either ; its entire originality precludes that. 
Neither is it of that order of plain faces which improve 
upon acquaintance. Some very good but ordinary peo- 
ple, by an unwearied perseverance in good offices, put a 
cheat upon our eyes, juggle our senses of their natural 
impressions, and set us upon discovering good indica- 
tions in a countenance which at first sight promised no- 
thing less. "We detect gentleness, which had escaped us, 
lurking about an under lip. But when Mrs. Conrady 
has done you a service, her face remains the same; 
when she has done you a thousand, and you know that 
she is ready to double the number, still it is that indi- 
vidual face. Neither can you say of it that it would be 
a good face if it were not marked by the small-pox, a 
compliment which is always more admissive than excu- 
satory; for either Mrs. Oonrady never had the small- 
pox, or, as we say, took it kindly. No, it stands upon 
its own merits fairly. There it is. It is her mark, her 
token ; that which she is known by. 

That my Lord Shaftesbury and Sir William Temple 
are models of the genteel style of writing. — We should 
prefer saying, of the lordly and the gentlemanly. No- 
thing can be more unlike than the inflated finical rhap- 
sodies of Shaftesbury, and the plain natural chit-chat of 



182 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

Temple. The man of rank is discernible in both writers; 
but in the one it is only insinuated gracefully, in the other 
it stands out offensively. The peer seems to have writ- 
ten with his coronet on, and his Earl's mantle before 
him ; the commoner in his elbow-chair and undress. 
What can be more pleasant than the way in which the 
retired statesman peeps out in his essays, penned by the 
latter in his delightful retreat at Shene? They scent 
of Nimeguen and the Hague. Scarce an authority is 
quoted under an ambassador. Don Francisco de Melo, 
a "" Portugal Envoy in England," tells him it was fre- 
quent in his country for men spent with age and other 
decays, so as they could not hope for above a year or two 
of life, to ship themselves away in a Brazil fleet, and after 
their arrival there to go on a great length, sometimes of 
twenty or thirty years or more, by the force of that 
vigor they recovered with that remove. " Whether such 
an effect " (Temple beautifully adds) " might grow from 
the air or the fruits of that climate, or by approaching 
nearer the sun, which is the fountain of light and heat, 
when their natural heat was so far decayed, or whether 
the piecing out of an old man's life were worth the pains^ 
I can not tell : perhaps the play is not worth the can- 
dle." Monsieur Pompone, " French Ambassador in his 
(Sir William's) time at the Hague," certifies him that in 
his life he had never heard of any man in France that 
arrived at a hundred years of age; a limitation of life 
which the old gentleman imputes to the excellence of 
their climate, giving them such a liveliness of temper 
and humor as disposes them to more pleasures of all 
kinds than in any other countries ; and moralizes upon 
the matter very sensibly. The " late Eobert, Earl of 
Leicester," furnishes him with a story of a Countess of 



POPULAli FALLACIElS. 1^J3 

Desmond, married out of England in Edward lY.'stime, 
and who lived far in King James's reign. The " same 
noble person " gives him an account how such a year, in 
the same reign, there went about the country a set of 
morrice-dancers, composed of ten men who danced, a 
Maid Marian, and a tabor and pipe; and how these 
twelve, one with another, made up twelve hundred years. 
" It was not so much " (says Temple) " that so many in 
one small county (Hertfordshire) should live to that age, 
as that they should be in vigor and in humor to travel 
and to dance." Monsieur Zulichem, one of his " col- 
leagues at the Hague," informs him of a cure for the gout, 
which is confirmed by another "Envoy," Monsieur Ser- 
inchamps, in that town, who had tried it. Old Prince 
Maurice of Nassau recommends to him the use of ham- 
mocks in that complaint ; having been allured to sleep, 
while suffering under it himself, by the " constant motion 
or swinging of those airy beds." Count Egmont, and 
the Rhinegrave, who " was killed last summer before 
Maestricht," impart to him their experiences. 

But the rank of the writer is never more innocently 
disclosed than where he takes for granted the compli- 
ments paid by foreigners to his fruit-trees. For the taste 
and perfection of what we esteem the best, he can trulj 
say that the French, who have eaten his peaches and 
grapes at Shene in no very ill year, have generally C( n- 
cluded that the last are as good as any they have eaten in 
France on this side Fontainebleau, and the first as good 
as any they have eaten in Gascony. Italians have agreed 
his white figs to be as good as any of that sort in Italy, 
which is the earlier kind of white fig there ; for "in the 
later kind and the blue, we can not come near the warm 
climates, jio more than in the Frontignac or Muscat 



184 fflE LAST ASSAYS 0^ ELIA, 

grape." His orange trees, too, are as large as anj he 
saw when he was young in France, except those of Fon- 
tainebleau ; or what he has seen since in the Low Coun- 
tries, except some very old ones of the Priuce of Orange's. 
Of grapes he had the honor of bringing over four sorts 
into England, which he enumerates, and supposes that 
they are all by this time pretty common among some 
gardeners in his neighborhood, as well as several persons 
of quality ; for he ever thought all things of this kind 
"the commoner they are made the better." The garden 
pedantry with which he asserts that 'tis to little purpose 
to plant any of the best fruits, as peaches or grapes, 
hardly, he doubts, beyond Northamptonshire at the fur- 
thest northwards, and praises the " Bishop of Munster at 
Oosevelt," for attempting nothing beyond cherries in that 
cold climate, is equally pleasant and in character. '' I 
may, perhaps " (lie thus ends his sweet Garden Essay 
with a passage worthy of Cowley), " be allowed to know 
something of this trade, since I have so long allowed my- 
self to be good for nothing else, which few men will do, 
or enjoy their gardens, without often looking abroad to 
see how other matters play, what motions in the state, 
and what invitations they may hope for into other scenes. 
For my own part, as the country life, and this part of it 
more particularly, were the inclination of my youth it- 
self, so they are the pleasure of my age ; and I can truly 
say that, among many great employments that have fall- 
en to my share, I have never asked or sought for any of 
them, but have often endeavored to escape from them 
into the ease and freedom of a private scene, where a 
man may go his own way and his own pace, in the com- 
mon paths and circles of life. The measure of choosing 
well is whether a man likes what lie has chosen, which, 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 185 

I thank God, has befallen me ; and though, among the 
follies of my life, building and planting have not been 
the least, and have cost me more than I have the confi- 
dence to own, yet they have been fully recompensed by 
the sweetness and satisfaction of this retreat, where, 
since my resolution taken of never entering again into 
any public employments, I have passed five years with- 
out ever once going to town, though I am almost in sight 
of it, and have a liouse there always ready to receive me. 
Nor has this been any sort of affectation, as some have 
thought it, but a mere want of desire or humor to make 
so small a remove ; for when I am in this corner, I can 
truly say with Horace, Me quoties rejicit^ etc. 

* Me when the cold Digentian stream revives, 
What does my friend believe I think or ask ? 
Let me yet less possess, so I may live, 
Whate'er of life remains, unto myself. 
May I have books enough, and one year's store, 
Not to depend upon each doubtful hour ; 
This is enough of mighty Jove to pray, 
Who, as he pleases, gives and takes away.' " 

The writings of Temple are, in general, after this easy 
copy. On one occasion, indeed, his wit, which was mostly 
subordinate to nature and tenderness, has seduced him 
into a string of felicitous antitheses — which, it is obvious 
to remark, have been a model to Addison and succeeding 
essayists. " Who would not be covetous, and with rea- 
son," he says, "if health could be purchased with gold? 
Who not ambitious, if it were at the command of power, 
or restored by honor? But, alas ! a white staft' will not 
help gouty feet to walk better than a common cane ; nor 
•% blu^ riband bind up a wound so well as a fillet, ^he 



186 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

glitter of gold, or of diamonds, will but hurt sore eyes 
instead of curing tliem ; and an aching head will be no 
more eased by wearing a crown than a common night- 
cap." 

In a far better style, and more accordant with his 
own humor of plainness, are the concluding sentences of 
hiK "Discourse upon Poetry." Temple took a part in 
the controversy about the ancient and the modern learn- 
ing ; and, with that partiality so natural and so graceful 
in an old man, whose state engagements had left him 
little leisure to look into modern productions, while his 
retirement gave him occasion to look back upon the clas- 
sic studies of his youth, decided in favor of the latter^ 
"Certain it is," he says, "that, whether the fierceness 
of the Gothic humors or noise of their perpetual wars 
frightened it away, or that the unequal mixture of the 
modern languages would not bear it — the great heights 
and excellency both of poetry and music fell with the 
Roman learning and empire, and have never since recov- 
ered the admiration and applauses that before attended 
them. Yet, such as they are amongst us, they must 
be confessed to be the softest and the sweetest^ the most 
general and most innocent amusements of common time 
and life. They still find room in the courts of princes 
and the cottages of shepherds. They serve to revive 
and animate the dead calm of poor and idle lives, and to 
allay or divert the violent passions and perturbations of 
the greatest and the busiest men. And both these effects 
are of equal use to human life ; for the mind of man is like 
the sea, which is neither agreeable to the beholder nor 
the voyager in a calm or in a storm, but is so to both 
when a little agitated by gentle gales ; and so the mind, 
when moved by soft and easy passions or affections. I 



POPULAR }i'ALLACIES. 187 

know verj well that many who pretend to be wise by 
the force of being grave, are apt to despise both poetry 
and music, as toys and trifles too light for the use or en- 
tertainment of serious men. But whoever find them- 
selves wholly insensible to their charms would, I think, 
do well to keep their own counsel, for fear of reproach- 
ing their own temper, and bringing the goodness of their 
natures, if not of their understandings, into question, 
"While this world lasts, I doubt not but the pleasure and 
request of these two entertainments will do so too ; and 
happy those that content themselves with these, or any 
other so easy and so innocent, and do not trouble the 
world or other men because they can not be quiet them- 
selves, though nobody hurts them." " When all is done " 
(he concludes), " human life is at the greatest and the 
best but like a f roward child, that must be played with, 
and liumored a little, to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, 
and then the care is over." 

Tliat home is home though it is never so homely. — Two 
homes there are, we are sure, that are no homes : the home 
of the very poor man, and another which we shall speak 
to presently. Crowded places of cheap entertainment, and 
the benches of alehouses, if they could speak, might bear ' 
mournful testimony to the first of our assertions. To 
them the very poor man resorts for an image of the horae 
which he can not find at home. Eor a starved grate, and 
a scanty firing, that is not enough to keep alive the nat- 
ural heat in the fingers of so many shivering children 
with their mother, he finds in the depth of winter always 
a blazing hearth, and a hob to warm his pittance of beer 
by. Instead of the clamors of a wife, made gaunt by 
famishing, he meets with a cheerful attendance beyond 



188 THE LAST ESSAIS OF ELlA. 

the merits of the trifle which he can afford to spend. He 
has companions, which his home denies him, for the 
very poor man has no visitors. He can look into the 
goings on of the world, and speak a little to politics. At 
home there are no politics stirring, but the domestic. All 
interests, real or imaginary, all topics that should expand 
the mind of man, and connect him to a sympathy witt 
general existence, are crushed in the absorbing consider- 
ation of food to be obtained for the family. Beyond 
the price of bread, news is senseless and impertinent. 
At home there is no larder. Here there is at least a 
show of plenty ; and while he cooks his lean scrap of 
butcher's meat before the common bars, or munches his 
humbler cold viands, his relishing bread and cheese with 
an onion, m a corner, where no one reflects upon his 
poverty, he has a sight of the substantial joint providing 
for the landlord and his family. He takes an interest in 
the dressing of it ; and while he assists in removing the 
trivet from the fire, he feels that there is such a thing as 
beef and cabbage, which he was beginning to forget at 
home. All this while he deserts his wife and children. 
But what wife and what children? Prosperous men, 
who object to this desertion, image to themselves some 
clean contented family like that which they go home to. 
But look at the countenance of the poor wife who fol- 
lows and persecutes her goodman to the door of the pub- 
lic house, which he is about to enter, when something 
like shame would restrain him if stronger misery did not 
induce him to pass the threshold. That face, ground by 
want, in whicii every cheerful, every conversable linea- 
ment has been long effaced by misery—is that a face to 
stay at home with ? Is it more a woman, or a wild cat? 
Alas ! it is the face of the wife of his youth that onc« 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 189 

smiled upon him. It can smile no longer. What com- 
forts can it share ? what burdens can it lighten ? Oh, 'tis 
a fine thing to talk of the humble meal shared together ! 
But what if there be no bread in the cupboard? The in- 
nocent prattle of his children takes out the sting of a 
man's poverty. But the children of the very poor do 
not prattle. It is none of the least frightful features in 
that condition, that there is no childishness in its dwell- 
ings. Poor people, said a sensible nurse to us once, do 
not bring up their children ; they drag them up. The 
little careless darling of the wealthier nursery, in their 
hovel is transformed betimes into a premature reflect- 
ing person. No one has time to dandle it, no one 
thinks it worth while to coax it, to soothe it, to toss 
it up and down, to humor it. There is none to kiss 
away its tears. If it cries, it can only be beaten. It 
has been prettily said that "a babe is fed with milk 
and praise." But the aliment of this poor babe was 
thin, unnourishing ; the return to its little baby -tricks, 
and efforts to engage attention, bitter ceaseless objur- 
gation. It never had a toy, or knew what a coral meant. 
It grew up without the lullaby of nurses ; it was a stran- 
ger to the patient fondle, the hushing caress, the attracting 
novelty, the costlier plaything, or the cheaper off-hand 
contrivance to divert the child ; the prattled nonsense 
(best sense to it), the wise impertinences, the wholesome 
lies, the apt story interposed, that puts a stop to present 
sufferings, and awakens the passion of young wonder. It 
was never sung to ; no one ever told to it a tale of the 
nursery. It was dragged up, to live or to die as it hap- 
pened. It had no young dreams. It broke at once into 
the iron realities of hfe. A child exists not for the very 
poor as any ooject of dalliance ; it is only another mouth 



190 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

to be fed, a pair of little hands to be betimes inured to la- 
bor. It is the rival, till it can be the cooperator, for 
food with the parent. It is never his mirth, his diver« 
sion, his solace ; it never makes him young again, with 
recalling his young times. The children of the very poor 
lave no young times. It makes the very heart bleed to 
overhear the casual street-talk between a poor woman 
and her little girl, a woman of the better sort of poor in 
a condition rather above the squalid beings which wo 
have been contemplating. It is not of toys, of nursery 
books, of summer holidays (fitting that age); of the 
promised sight or play ; of praised sufficiency at school. 
It is of mangling and clear-starching, of the price of coals, 
or of potatoes. The questions of the child, that should 
be the very outpourings of curiosity in idleness, are 
marked with forecast and melancholy providence. It 
has come to be a woman, before it was a child. It has 
learned to go to market ; it chaffers, it haggles, it envies, 
It murmurs; it is knowing, acute, sharpened; it nev- 
er prattles. Had we not reason to say that the home of 
the very poor is no home ? 

There is yet another home, which we are constrained 
to deny to be one. It has a larder, which the home of 
she poor man wants ; its fireside conveniences, of which 
the poor dream not. But with all this, it is no home. 
it is the house of a man that is infested with many vis- 
itors. May we be branded for the veriest churl, if we 
deny our heart to the many noble-hearted friends that at 
times exchange their dwelling for our poor roof! It is 
not of guests that we complain, bat of endless, purpose* 
less visitants; droppers in, as they are called. We some- 
times wonder from what sky they fall. It is the very 
error of the position of our lodging ; its horoscopy wa^ 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 191 

iii caicuJated, being Just situate in a medium—a plaguy 
suburban mid-space — fitted to catch idlers from town or 
country. We are older than we were, and age is easily 
put out of its way. We have fewer sands in our glass to 
reckon upon, and we can not brook to see them drop in 
endlessly succeeding impertinences. At our time of life, 
to be alone sometimes is as needful as sleep. It is the 
refreshing sleep of the day. Oh, the comfort of sitting 
down heartily to an old foho, and thinking surely that 
th3 next hour or two will be your own — and the misery 
of being defeated by the useless call of somebody, who 
is come to tell you that he is just come from hearing Mr. 
Irving! What is that to you ? Let him go home and digest 
what the good man said to him. You are at your chapel 
in your oratory. The growing infirmities of age manifest 
themselves in nothing more strongly than in an inveterate 
dislike of interruption. The thing which we are doing, 
we wish to be permitted to do. We h^ve neither much 
knowledge nor devices ; but there are fewer in the place 
to which we hasten. We are not willingly put out of our 
way, even at a game of nine-pins. While youth was, we 
had vast reversions in time fxiture ; we are reduced to a 
present pittance, and obliged to economize in that articlt. 
We bleed away our moments now as hardly as our ducatg. 
We can not bear to have our thin wardrobe eaten and 
fretted into by moths. We are willing to barter our good 
time with a friend, who gives us in exchange his own. 
Herein is the distinction between the genuine guest and 
the visitant. This latter takes your good time, and gives 
you his bad in exchange. The guest is domestic to yon 
as your good cat or household bird ; the visitant is your 
fly, that flaps in at your window, and out again, leaving 
nothing but a sense of disturbance, and victuals spoiled 



192 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA, 

The inferior functions of life begin to move heavily. We 
can not concoct our food with interruptions. Our chief 
meal, to be nutritive, must be solitary. With ditiiculty we 
can eat before a guest, and never understood what the rel- 
ish of public feasting meant. Meats have no sapor, nor 
digestion fair play, in a crowd. The unexpected coming 
in of a visitant stops the machine. There is a punctual 
generation who time their calls to the precise commence- 
ment of your dining hour — not to eat, but to see you eat. 
Our knife and fork drop instinctively, and we feel that 
we have swallowed our latest morsel. Others again show 
their genius, as we have said, in knocking the moment 
you have just sat down to a book. They have a peculiar 
compassionate sneer, with which they " hope that they 
do not interrupt your studies." Though they flutter off 
the next moment, to carry their impertinences to the 
nearest student that they can call their friend, the tone 
of the book is spoiled ; we shut the leaves, and, with 
Dante's lovers, read no more that day. It were well if 
the effect of intrusion were simply coextensive with its 
presence, but it mars all the good hours afterward. These 
scratches in appearance leave an orifice that closes not 
hastily. "It is a prostitution of the bravery of friend- 
ship," says worthy Bishop Taylor, "to spend it upon 
impertinent people, who are, it may be, loads to their 
families, but can never ease my loads." This is the se- 
cret of their gad dings, their visits, and morning calls : 
they too have homes, which are no homes. 

That we must not look a gift horse in the mouth — nor 
a lady's age in the parish register. "We hope we have 
more delicacy than to do either ; but some faces spare us 
the trouble of these dental inquiries. And what if the 



f>OPtfLAE FALLACIES, 19^ 

beast, which my friend would force upon my acceptance^ 
prove upon the face of it a sorry Rosinante, a lean, ill- 
favored jade, whom no gentleman could think of setting 
up in his stables ? Must I, rather than not be obliged tC' 
my friend, make her a companion to Eclipse or Light- 
voot ? A horse-giver, no more than a horse-seller, has a 
ight to palm his spavined article upon us for good ware. 
An equivalent is expected in either case ; and, with mj 
own good will, I would no more be cheated out of mj 
thanks than out of my money. Some people have s 
knack of putting upon you gifts of no real value, to en- 
gage you to substantial gratitude. We thank them for 
nothing. Our friend Mitis carries this humor of never 
refusing a present to the very point of absurdity — if it 
were possible to couple the ridiculous with so much mis- 
taken delicacy and real good nature. Not an apartment 
in his fine house (and he has a true taste in household 
decorations), but is stuffed up with some preposterous 
print or rau-ror— the worst adapted to his panels that 
may be—the presents of his friends that know his weak- 
ness ; while his noble Vandykes are displaced, to make 
x'oom for a set of daubs, the work of some wretched ar- 
tist of his acquaintance, who, having had them returned 
upon his hands for bad likenesses, finds his account m 
bestowing them here gratis. The good creature has not 
the heart to mortify the painter at the expense of an 
honest refusal. It is pleasant (if it did not vex one at 
the same time) to see him sitting in his dining-parlor, 
surrounded with obscure aunts and cousins to God knows 
whom, while the true Lady Marys and Lady Bettys of 
his own honorable family, in favor to these adopted 
frights, are consigned to the staircase and the lumber- 
room. In like manner his goodly shelves are one by one 
13 



194 TfHE LAST ISSaAYS Oh' ELK 

Etripped of his favorite eld authors, fco give place to a 
collection of presentation copies— the flour and bran of 
modern poetry. A presentation copy, reader — if haply 
you are yet innocent of such favors — is a copy of a book 
wj&ich does not sell, sent you by the author, with his 
foolish autograph at the beginning of it ; for which, if 
a stranger, he only demands your friendship; if a brother 
author, he expects from you a book of yours, which does 
sell, in return. We can speak to experience, having hj 
us a tolerable assortment of these gift-horses. Not to 
ride a metaphor to death, we are willing to acknowledge 
that in some gifts there is sense. A duplicate out of a 
friend's library (where he has more than one copy of a 
rare author) is intelligible. There are favors short of the 
pecuniary — a thing not fit to be hinted at among gentle- 
men — which confer as much grace upon the acceptor as 
the offerer. The kind, we confess, which is most to our 
palate, is of those little conciliatory missives, which for 
their vehicle generally choose a hamper— little odd pres- 
ents of game, fruit, perhaps wine — though it is essential 
to the delicacy of the latter, that it be home-made. We 
iov9 to have our friend in the country sitting thus at our 
tabic by proxy; to apprehend his presence (though a 
hundred miles may be between us) by a turkey, v/hose 
goodly aspect reflects tons his "plump corpusculum " ; 
to taste him in grouse or woodcock; to feel him gliding 
down in the toast peculiar to the latter ; to concorporat© 
him in a slice of Canterbury brawn. This is indeed t» 
have him within ourselves, to know him intimately ; such 
participation is methinks unitive. ac the old theologians 
phrase it. For these considerations we should be sorry 
if certain restrictive regulations, which are thought to 
bear hard upon the peasantry ot this country, were en- 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 195 

cirely done away with. A hare, as the law now stands, 
makes many friends. Caius conciliates Titius (knowing 
his goiot) with a leash of partridges, litius (suspecting 
his partiality for them) passes them to Lucius ; who in 
his turn, preferring his friend's relish to his own, makes 
them over to Marcius ; till in their ever- widening pro- 
gress, and round of unconscious circum-migration, they 
distribute the seeds of harmony over half a parish. We 
are well disposed to this kind of sensible remembrances* 
and are the less apt to be taken by those little airy tokens 
— impalpable to the palate — which, under the names of 
rings, lockets, keepsakes, amuse some people's fancy 
mightily. We could never away with these indigestible 
trifles. They are the very kickshaws and foppery of 
friendship. 

That you must love me and love my dog. " Good sir, 
or madam — as it maybe — we most willingly embrace the 
offer of your friendship. We have long known your ex- 
cellent qualities. We have wished to have you nearer to 
us ; to hold you within the very innermost fold of our 
heart. We can have no reserve toward a person of your 
open and noble nature. The frankness of your humor 
suits us exactly. We have been long looking for such a 
friend. Quick — let us disburthen our troubles into each 
other's bosom — let us make our single joys shine by re- 
duplication — But yap^ yojpt y(^p / what is this confounded 
cur? he has fastened his tooth, which is none of the 
bluntest, just in the fleshy part of my leg." 

" It is my dog, sir. You must love him for my sake. 
Here, Test— Test— Test ! " 

" But he has bitten me„" 

"Ay, that he is apt to Cic ::!'. jqu are better ac- 



196 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

quainted with him. I have had him three years. He 
never bites me." 

Yap, yap, yap! — "He is at it again." 

" Oh, sir, you must not kick him. He does not hke 
to be kicked. I expect my dog to be treated with all the 
respect due to myself." 

"But do you always take him out with you, when 
you go a friendship-hunting? " 

"Invariably. 'Tis the sweetest, prettiest, best-con- 
ditioned animal. I call him my te^t — the touch-stone by 
which to try a friend. No one can properly be said to 
love me who does not love him." 

" Excuse us, dear sir — or madam, aforesaid — if upon 
further consideration we are obliged to decline the other- 
wise invaluable offer of your friendship. We do not like 
dogs." 

"Mighty well, sir. You know the conditions — you 
may have worse offers. Come along, Test." 

The above dialogue is not so imaginary but that, in 
the intercourse of life, we have had frequent occasions 
of breaking off an agreeable intimacy by reason of these 
canine appendages. They do not always come in the 
shape of dogs ; they sometimes wear the more plausible 
and human character of kinsfolk, near acquaintances, 
my friend's friend, his partner, his wife, or his childreai. 
We could never yet form a friendship — not to speak 
of more delicate correspondence — however much to our 
taste, without the intervention of some third anomaly, 
some impertinent clog affixed to the relation — the un- 
derstood dog in the proverb. The good tilings of life 
are not to be had singly, but come to us with a mix- 
ture ; like a schoolboy's holiday, with a task affixed to 
the tail of it. What a delightful companion is . . . ., if 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 197 

he did not always bring his tall cousin with him ! H« 
seems to grow with him; like some of those double 
births which we remember to have read of with such 
wonder and delight in the old " Athenian Oracle," where 
Swift commenced author by writing Pindaric Odes (what 
a beginning for him !) upon Sir William Temple. There 
ifl the picture ®f the brother, with the little brother 
peeping out at Ids shoulder; a species of fraternity 
which we have no name of kin close enough to compre- 
hend. When .... comes, poking in his head and 
shoulder into your room, as if to feel his entry, you 
think, surely you have now got him to yourself — what 
a three hours' chat we shall have! But ever in the 
haunch of him, and before his diffident body is well dis- 
closed in your apartment, appears the haunting shadow 
of the cousin, overpeering his modest kinsman, and sure 
to overlay the expected good talk with his insufferable 
procerity of stature, and uncorresponding dwarfishness 
of observation. Misfortunes seldom come alone. 'Tis 
hard when a blessing comes accompanied. Can not we 
like Sempronia, without sitting down to chess with her 
eternal brother? or know Sulpicia, without knowing all 
the round of her card-playing relations ? Must my 
friend's brethren of necessity be mino also ? Must we be 
hand and glove with Dick Selby the parson, or Jack Sel- 
by the calico-printer, because W. S., who is neither, but 
a ripe wit and a critic, has the misfortune to claim a 
eommon parentage with them ? Let him lay down his 
brothers, and 'tis odds but we will cast him in a pair of 
®urs (we have a superflux) to balance the concession. 
Let F. H. lay down his garrulous uncle ; and Honorius 
dismiss his vapid wife and superfluous establishment of 
six boys — things between boy and manhood, too ripe for 



198 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

play, too raw for conversation — that come in, impudent^ 
ly staring their father's old friend out of countenance ; 
and will neither aid, nor let alone, the conference : that 
we may once more meet upon equal terms, as we were 
wont to do in the disengaged state of bachelorhood. 

It is well if your friend, or mistress, be content with 
these canicular probations. Few young ladies but in this 
sense keep a dog. But when Eutilia hounds at you her 
tiger aunt ; or Ruspina expects you to cherish and fondle 
her viper sister, whom she has preposterously taken into 
her bosom, to try stinging conclusions upon your con- 
stancy ; they must not complain if the house be rather thin 
of suitors. Scylla must have broken off many excellent 
matches in her time, if she insisted upon all that loved 
her loving her dogs also. 

An excellent story to this moral is told of Merry, of 
Delia Cruscan memory. In tender youth he loved and 
courted a modest appendage to the Opera — in truth, a 
dancer — who had won him by the artless contrast be- 
tween her manners and situation. She seemed to him a 
native violet, that had been transplanted by some rude 
accident into that exotic and artificial hotbed. Nor, in 
truth, was she less genuine and sincere than she ap- 
peared to him. He wooed and won this flower. Only for 
appearance' sake, and for due honor to the bride's rela- 
tions, she craved that she might have the attendance of 
her friends and kindred at the approaching solemnity. 
The request was too amiable not to be conceded; and in 
this solicitude for conciliating the good will of mere rela- 
tions, he found a presage of her superior attentions to him- 
self when the golden shaft should have "killed the flock 
of all affections else." The morning came ; and at the 
Star and Garter, Richmond — the place appointed for the 



^OI^IJLAR FALtiACIKS. 1^9 

friv ikfasting — accompanied with one English friend, he 
ii\L^^ ^Uieutly awaited what reenforcement the bride should 
hn.jg to grace the ceremony. A rich muster she had 
m^. Je. They came in six coaches— the whole corps de baU 
let- ^French, Italian, men, and women. Monsieur de B.., 
the mmous pirouetter of the day, led his fair spouse, but 
cra^y, from the banks of the Seine. The Prima Donna 
had sent her excuse, but the first and second Buffa were 
ihei^; and Signor Sc— , and Signora Oh—, and Madam© 
V"^, with a countless cavalcade besides of chorusers, 
figm antes! at the sight of whom. Merry afterward de^ 
clarcd, " then for the first time it struck him seriously 
that ne was about to marry — a dancer." But there wap 
no hwlp for it. Besides, it was her day ; these were, w 
fact, iier friends and kinsfolk. The assemblage, though 
whimsical, was all very natural. But when the bride, 
handing out of the last coach a still more extraordinary 
figure than the rest, presented to him as her father— the 
gentleman that was to give her away— no less a person 
than toignor Delpini himself— Avith a sort of pride, &9 
much as to say, See what I have brought to do us hon- 
or !— 't;he thought of so extraordinary a paternity quite 
overcame him ; and slipping away under some pretense 
from the bride and her motley adherents, poor Merry 
took horse from the back yard to the nearest seacoast, 
from which, shipping himself to America, he shortly 
after consoled himself with a more congenial match in 
the person of Miss Brunton ; relieved from his intended 
clown father, and a bevy of painted buffas for bridee 
maids. 

That we should rise with the larJc. — At what precise 
minute that little airy musician doffs his night gear, aud 



^00 ffiE liAST ESSAY'S OF EtlA. 

prepares to tune up his unseasonable matins, we are not 
naturalists enough to determine. But for a mere human 
gentleman — that has no orchestra business to call him 
from his warm bed to such preposterous exercise -we 
take ten, or half after ten (eleven, of course, during this 
Christmas solstice), to be the very earliest hour at which 
he can begin to think of abandoning his pillow. To think 
of it, we say ; for to do it in earnest requires another 
half hour's good consideration. N"ot but there are pretty 
sunrisings, as we are told, and such like gawds, abroad 
in the world, in summer-time especially, some hours be- 
for ewhat we have assigned, which a gentleman may see, 
as they say, only for getting up. But having been 
tempted once or twice, in earlier life, to assist at those 
ceremonies, we confess our curiosity abated. We are 
no longer ambitious of being the sun's courtiers, to at- 
tend at his morning levees. We hold the good hours 
of the dawn too sacred to waste them upon such observ- 
ances ; which have in them, besides, something Pagan 
and Persic. To say truth, we never anticipated our 
usual hour, or got up with the sun (as 'tis called), to go 
a journey, or upon a foolish whole day's pleasuring, but 
we suffered for it all the long hours after in listlessness 
and headaches ; Nature herself sufficiently declaring her 
sense of our presumption in aspiring to regulate our frail 
waking courses by the measures of that celestial and 
sleepless traveler. We deny not that there is something 
sprightly and vigorous, at the outset especially, in these 
break-of-day excursions. It is flattering to get the start 
of a lazy world, to conquer death by proxy in his image. 
But the seeds of sleep and mortality are in us ; and we 
pay usually, in strange qualms before night falls, the 
penalty of the unnatural inversion. Therefore, while 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 201 

the busy part of mankind are fast huddling on their 
clothes, or are already up and about their occupations, 
content to have swallowed their sleep by wholesale, we 
choo?e to linger abed, and digest our dreams. It is the 
very time to recombine the wandering images which 
night in a confused mass preseoted ; to snatch them from 
forgetfulness ; to shape and mould them. Some people 
have no good of their dreams. Like fast feeders, they 
gulp them too grossly to taste them curiously. We love 
to chew the cud of a foregone vision ; to collect the 
scattered rays of a brighter phantasm, or act over again, 
with firmer nerves, the sadder nocturnal tragedies ; to 
drag into daylight a struggling and half-vanishing night- 
mare; to handle and examine the terrors or the airy 
iolaces. We have too much respect for these spiritual 
communications to let them go so lightly. We are not 
80 stupid or so careless as that imperial forgetter of his 
dreams, that we should need a seer to remind us of the 
form of them. They seem to us to have as much signifi- 
cance as our waking concerns ; or rather to import us 
more nearly, as more nearly we approach by years to the 
shadowy world whither we are hastening. We have 
shaken hands with the world's business; we have done 
with it ; we have discharged ourself of it. Why sliould 
we get up ? We have neither suit to solicit, nor affairs 
to manage. The drama has shut in upon us at the fourth 
act. We have nothing here to expect but in a short time 
a sick-bed and a dismissal. We delight to anticipate 
death by such shadows as night affords. We are already 
half acquainted with ghosts. We were never much in 
the world. Disappointment early struck a dark veil be- 
tween us and its dazzling illusions. Our spirits showed 
gray before our hairs. The mighty changes of the world 



202 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

already appear as but tlie vain stuff out of whicli dramas 
are composed. We have asked no more of life than what 
the mimic images in playhouses present us with. Even 
those types have waxed fainter. Our clock appears to 
have struck. "We are supeeanntjated. In this dearth of 
mundane satisfaction, we contract politic alliances witli 
shadows. It is good to have friends at court. The ab- 
stracted media of dreams seem no ill introduction to that 
spiritual presence, upon which, in no long time, we ex- 
pect to be thrown. "We are trying to know a little of 
the usages of that colony; to learn the language, and 
the faces we shall meet with there, that we may be the 
less awkward at our first coming among them. "We wil- 
lingly call a phantom our fellow, as knowing we shall 
soon be of their dark companionship. Therefore we 
cherish dreams. We try to spell in them the alphabet 
of tlie invisible world, and think we know already how 
it shall be wHh us. Those uncouth shapes, which, while 
we clung to flesh and blood, affrighted us, have become 
familiar. We feel attenuated into their meager essences, 
and have given the hand of half-way approach to incor- 
poreal being. We once thought life to be something, 
but it has unaccountably fallen from us before its time. 
Therefore we choose to dally with visions. The sun has 
no purposes of ours to light us to. Why should we get 
up? 

That we should lie down with the lawl). — We could 
never quite understand the philosophy of this arrange- 
,ment, or tlie wisdom of our ancestors in sending us for 
instruction to those woolly bedfelloAvs. A sheep, when 
it is dark, has nothing to do but to shut his silly eyes, 
and sleep if he can. Man found out long sixes. Hail, 



:PO?ULAR FALLACIES. 2(J3 

candleligM! without disparagement to sun or moon, the 
kindliest luminary of the three — if we may not rather 
style thee their radiant deputy, mild viceroy of the moon ! 
We love to read, talk, sit silent, eat, drink, sleep, by 
candlelight. They are everybody's sun and moon. This 
is our peculiar and household planet. Wanting it, what 
isavage unsocial nights must our ancestors have spent, 
wintering in caves and unillumined fastnesses! They 
must have lain about and grumbled at one another in th« 
dark. What repartees could have passed, when you 
must have felt about for a smile, and handled a neighbor's 
cheek to be sure that he understood it ? This accounts 
for the seriousness of the elder poetry. It has a somber 
cast (try Hesiod or Ossian), derived from the tradition 
of those unlanterned nights. Jokes came in with can- 
dles. We wonder how they saw to pick up a pin, if they 
had any. How did they sup ? Wliat a melange of chance 
carving they must have made of it! Here one had got 
a leg of a goat, when he wanted a horse's shoulder ; there 
another had dipped his scooped palm in a kid-skin of 
wild honey, when he meditated right mare's milk. — There 
is neither good eating nor drinking in fresco. Who, 
even in these civilized times, has never experienced this, 
when at some economic table he has commenced dining 
after dusk, and waited for the flavor till the lights came? 
The senses absolutely give and take reciprocally. Can 
you tell pork from veal in the dark ? or distinguish Sher- 
ris from pure Malaga? Take away the candle from the 
smoking man : by the glimmering of the left ashes, he 
knows that he is still smoking, but he know^s it only by 
an inference ; till the restored light, coming in aid of the 
olfactories, reveals to both senses the full aroma. Then 
bow he redoubles his puffs 1 how he burnishes I — There 



204 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

is absolutely no sucli thing as reading but by a candle* 
We have tried the affectation of a book at noonday in 
gardens, and in sultry arbors ; but it was labor thrown 
away. Those gay motes in the beam come about you, 
hovering and teasing, like so many coquettes, that will 
have you all to their self, and are jealous of your abstrac 
tions. By the midnight taper the writer digests his 
meditations. By the same light we must approach to 
their perusal, if we would catch the flame, the odor. It 
is a mockery, all that is reported of the influential Phoe- 
bus, No true poem ever owed its birth to the sun's light. 
They are abstracted works — 

Things that were born when none but the still night 
And his dumb candle saw his pinching throes. 

Marry, daylight — daylight might furnish the images, 
the crude material ; but for the fine shapings, the true 
turning and filing (as mine author hath it), they must be 
content to hold their inspiration of the candle. The 
mild internal light, that reveals them, like fires on the 
domestic hearth, goes out in the sunshine. Night and 
silence call out the starry fancies. Milton's " Morning 
Hymn in Paradise," we would hold a good wager, was 
penned at midnight ; and Taylor's rich description of a 
sunrise * smells decidedly of the taper. Even ourself, in 
these our humbler lucubrations, tune our best-measured 
cadences (Prose has her cadences) not unfrequently to 
the charm of the drowsier watchman, "blessing the 
doors," or the wild sweep of winds at midnight. Even 
now a loftier speculation than we have yet attempted 
courts our endeavors. We would indite something 
about the Solar System. — Betty ^ 'bring the candles. 

*"HoJyDyinff.'» 



POPttLAR FALLACIES. tiOb 

Thai great wit is allied to madness.— So far from 
tills being true, the greatest wits will ever be found to 
he the sanest writers. It is impossible for the mind to 
conceive of a mad Shakespeare. The greatness of wit, 
by which, the poetic talent is here chiefly to be under- 
stood, manifests itself in the admirable balance of all the 
faculties. Madness is the disproportionate straining or 
excess of any one of them. "So strong a wit," says 
Cowley, speaking of a poetical friend, 

"... did Nature to him frame, 
As all things but his judgment overcame ; 
His judgment like the heavenly moon did show, 
Tempering that mighty sea below." 

The ground of the fallacy is, that men, finding in the 
raptures of the higher poetry a condition of exaltation 
to which they have no parallel in their own experience, 
besides the spurious resemblance of it In dreams and 
favers, impute a state of dreaminess and fever to the 
poet. But the true poet dreams being awake. He is 
not possessed by his subject, but has dominion over it. 
In the groves of Eden he walks familiar as in his native 
paths. He ascends the empyrean heaven, and is not in° 
fcoxicated ; he treads the burning marl without dismay ; 
he wings his flight without self-loss through realms of 
^' chaos and old night." Or if, abandoning himself to 
iiiat severer chaos of a " human mind untuned," he is 
content awhile to be mad with Lear, or to hate mankind 
(a sort of madness) with Timon, neither is that madnewi 
nor this misanthropy so unchecked but that — never 
letting the reins of reason wholly go, while most he 
seems to do so — he has his better genms still whispering 
at his ear, with the good servant Kent suggesting saner 



counsels, or with the honest steward Flavius recommend- 
ing kindlier resolutions. "Where he seems most to recede 
from humanity, he will be found the truest to it. From 
bejond the scope of Nature if he summon possible ex- 
istences, he subjugates them to the law of her consis- 
tency. He is beautifully loyal to that sovereign direct- 
ress, even when he appears most to betray and desert 
her. His ideal tribes submit to policy ; his very mon- 
sters are tamed to his hand, even as the wild sea-brood 
shepherded by Proteus. He tames, and he clothes them 
with attributes of flesh and blood, till they wonder at 
themselves, like Indian Islanders forced to submit to 
European vesture. Caliban', the Witches, are as true to 
the laws of their own nature (ours with a difference) as 
Othello, Hamlet, and Macbeth. Herein the great and 
the little wits are differenced ; that if the latter wander 
ever so little from nature or actual existence, they lose 
themselves and their readers. Their phantoms are law- 
less, their visions night-mares. They do not create, 
which implies shaping and consistency. Their imagina- 
tions are not active— for to be active is to call something 
into act and form — but passive, as men in sick dreams. 
For the supernatural, or something superadded to what 
we know of nature, they give you the plainly non-natu- 
ral. And if this were all, and that these mental hallucina- 
tions were discoverable only in the treatment of sub^^ects 
out of nature, or transcending it, the judgment might 
with some plea be pardoned if it ran riot, and a lUtle 
wantonized ; but even in the describing of real and every- 
day life, that which is before their eyes, one of t? tese 
lesser wits shall more deviate from nature — show r ore 
of that inconsequence which has a natural alliance " ith 
frenzy — ^than a great genius in his " maddest fits as 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 207 

^ /chers somewiiere cails them. We appeal to anj one 
ibhat is acquainted with the common run of Lane's novels 
m they existed some twenty or thirty years back— those 
scanty intellectual viands of the whole female reading 
public, till a happier genius arose and expelled for ever 
the innutritious phantoms— whether he has not found 
tis brain more " betossed," his memory more puzzled 
^iis sense of when and where more confounded, among 
the improbable events, the incoherent incidents, the in- 
iwnsistent characters or no-charaoters of some third-rate 
iove-intrigue— where the persons shall be a Lord Glen- 
damour and a Miss Rivers, and the scene only alternate 
between Bath and Bond Street— a more bewildering 
dreaminess induced upon him than he has felt wander- 
ing over all the fairy grounds of Spenser. In the pro- 
ductions we refer to, nothing but names and places is 
familiar ; the persons are neither of this world nor of any 
other conceivable one; an endless string of activities 
without purpose, of purposes destitute of motive : we 
meet phantoms in known walks— fantasques, only christ- 
ened. In the poet we have names which announce fic- 
tion; and we have absolutely no place at all, for the 
things and persons of the "Fairy Queen" prate not 
of their "whereabout." But in their inner nature, 
and the law of their speech and actions, we are at home 
and upon acquainted ground. The one turns life into a 
dream ; the other to the wildest dreams gives the sobrie- 
ties of every-day occurrences. By what subtle art of 
tracing the mental processes it is effected, we are not 
philosophers enough to explain; but in that wonderful 
episode of the cave of Mammon, in which the Money 
God appears first in the lowest form of a raiser, is then 
a worker of metals, and becomes the god of all the trea- 



208 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

sures of the world, and has a daughter, Amhition, before 
whom all the world kneels for favors — with the Hespe- 
rian fruit, the waters of Tantalus, with Pilate washing 
kis hands vainlj, but not impertinently, in the same 
stream — ^that wo should be at one moment in the cave of 
an old hoarder of treasures, at the next at the forge of 
the Cyclops, in a palace and yet in hell, all at once, with 
the shifting mutatioBS of the most rambling dream, and 
our judgment yet all the time awake, and neither able 
nor willing to detect the fallacy — is a proof of that hid- 
den sanity which still guides the poet in the wildest seem- 
ing aberrations. 

It is not enough to say that the whole episode i8 a 
copy of the mind's conceptions in sleep ; it is, in some 
sort — but what a copy ! Let the most romantic of us, 
that has been entertained all night with the spectacle of 
»ome wild and magnificent vision, recombine it in the 
morning, and try it by his waking judgment. That 
which appeared so shifting, and yet so coherent, while 
that faculty was passive, when it comes under cool ex- 
amination shall appear so reasonless and so unlinked, 
that we are ashamed to have been so deluded, and to 
have taken, though but in sleep, a monster for a gode 
But the transitions in this episode are every whit as vio- 
lent as in the most extravagant dream, and yet the wak- 
ing judgment ratifies them. 

That a sulky temper is a misfortune. — We grant that 
it is, and a very serious one — to a man's friends, and to 
all that have to do with him ; but whether the condition 
of the man himself is so much to be deplored may admit 
of a question. We can speak a little to it, being ourself 
but lately recovered — we whi»p«r it in confidence, read- 



J?OPULAR FALLACIES. 209 

er — out of a long and desperate fit of the sullens. Wa8 
the cure a blessing ? The conviction which wrought it 
came too clearly to leave a scruple of the fanciful injuries 
—for thej were mere fancies — which had provoked the 
humor. But the humor itself was too self-pleasing whil* 
it lasted — we know how bare we lay ourself in the coii« 
fession — to be abandoned all at once with the grounds ol 
it. We still brood over wrongs which we know to have 

been imaginary; and for our old acquaintance ]!T y 

whom we find to have been a truer friend than we took 
him for, we substitute some phantom — a Oaius or a 
Titius — as like him as we dare to form it, to wreak our 
yet unsatisfied resentments on. It is mortifying to fall 
at once from the pinnacle of neglect ; to forego the idea 
of having been ill-used and contumaciously treated by 
an old friend. The first thing to aggrandize a man in 
his own conceit is to conceive of himself as neglected. 
There let him fix if he can. To undeceive him is to de- 
prive him of the most tickling morsel within the range 
of self-complacency. 'No flattery can come near it. 
Happy is he who suspects his friend of an injustice ; but 
supremely blest, who thinks all his friends in a conspiracy 
to depress and undervalue him. There is a pleasure (we 
sing not to the profane) far beyond the reach of all that 
the world counts joy — a deep, enduring satisfaction in 
the depths, where the superficial seek it not, of discon- 
tent. Were we to recite one half of this mystery, which 
we were let into by our late dissatisfaction, all the world 
would be in love with disrespect; we should wear a 
slight for a bracelet, and neglects and contumacies would 
be the only matter for courtship. Unlike to that mys- 
terious book in the Apocalypse, the study of this mystery 
is unpalatable only in the commencement. The first 



210 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

sting of a suspicion is grievous ; but wait — out of that 
wound, which to flesh and blood seemed so difficult, 
there is balm and honey to be extracted. Your triend 
passed you on such or such a day, having in his company 
one that you conceived worse than ambiguously disposed 
toward you — passed you in the street without notice. 
To be sure he is something short-sighted, and it M^as in 
your power to have accosted him. But facts and sane 
inferences are trifles to a true adept in the science of dis- 
satisfaction. He must have seen you ; and S— — , who 
was with him, must have been the cause of the contempt. 
It galls you, and well it may. But have patience. Go 
home, and make the worst of it, and you are a made 
man for this time. Shut yourself up, and — rejecting, as 
an enemy to your peace, every whispering suggestion 
that but insinuates there may be a mistake — reflect seri- 
ously upon the many lesser instances which you had be- 
gun to perceive, in proof of your friend's disaffection 
toward you. None of them singly was much to the pur- 
pose, but the aggregate weight is positive; and you have 
this last affront to clench them. Thus far the process is 
anj^thing but agreeable. But now to your relief comes 
in the comparative faculty. You conjure up all the kind 
feelings you have had for your friend ; what you have 
been to him, and what you would have been to him if 
lie would have suffered you ; how you defended him in 
this or that place ; and his good name, his literary repu- 
tation, and so forth, was always dearer to you than your 
own! Your heart, spite of itself, yearns toward him. 
You could weep tears of blood but for a restraining pride. 
Hew say you ! do you not yet begin to apprehend a com- 
fort? some allay of sweetness in the bitter waters? 
Stop not here, nor penuriously cheat yourself of your re- 



POPULAR FALLACIES. glj 

Tersions. You are on vantage-ground. Enlarge your 
speculations, and take in the rest of your friends, as a 
spark kindles more sparks. Was there one among them 
who has not to you proved hollow, false, slippery as 
water ? Begin to think that the relation itself is incon° 
sistent with mortality — that the very idea of friendship^ 
with its component parts, as honor, fidelity, steadinesSj 
exists but in your single bosom. Image yourself to your» 
self, as the only possible friend in a world incapable 
of that communion. Now the gloom thickens. The 
little star of self-love twinkles, that is to encourage 
you through deeper glooms than this. You are not yet 
at the half-point of your elevation. You are not yet, 
believe me, half sulky enough. Adverting to the world 
in general (as these circles in the mind will spread to 
Infinity), reflect with what strange injustice you have 
ueen treated in quarters where (setting gratitude and 
the expectation of friendly returns aside as chimeras) 
you pretended no claim beyond justice, the naked due of 
all men. Think the very idea of right and fit ried from 
the earth, or your breast the solitary receptacle of it, till 
you have swelled yourself into at least one hemisphere ; 
the other being the vast Arabia Stony of your friends 
and the world aforesaid. To grow bigger every mo- 
ment in your own conceit, and the world to lessen ; to 
deify yourself at the expense of your species ; to judge 
the world -this is the acme and supreme point of your 
mystery— these the true Pleasuees of Sulkinesf. We 
profess no more of this grand secret than what ourself 
experimented on one rainy afternoon in the last week, 
sulking in om- study. We had proceeded to the penul- 
timate point, at which the true adept seldom stops, where 
the oonsideration of benefit forgot is about to merge in 



gl2 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELU. 

the meditation of general injustice— when a knock ^. 
the door was folio v^ed bj the entrance of the very friend 
whose not seeing of us in the morning (for we will now 
confess the case our own), an accidental oversight, had 
given rise to so much agreeable generalization ! To mor- 
tify us still more, and take down the whole flattering 
superstructure which pride had piled upon neglect, he 

had brought in his hand the identical S- , in whose 

favor we had suspected him of the contumacy. Assev- 
erations were needless, where the frank manner of them 
both was convictive of the injurious nature of the sus- 
picion. We fancied that they perceived our embarrass- 
ment, but were too proud, or something else, to confess 
to the secret of it. We had been but too lately in the 
condition of the noble patient in Horace — 

Qui se credebat miros audire tragoedos, 
In vacuo laDtus sessor plausorque theatro— 

and could have exclaimed with equal reason against tfei 
friendly hands that cured us— 

Pol, me occidlstis, amfci, 
Non servastis, ait ; cui sic extorta voluptai, 
Bl demptus per vim mentis gratissimus esf^ 



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